TESERO, Italy \u2014 Norway swept the Nordic combined events at the Milan-Cortina Winter Games with a victory in the team sprint Thursday in what could be the final time the sport is featured in the Olympics.<\/p>\n
Finland won silver and Austria captured the bronze on a day when a snowstorm made for tough travel in the two-man 15-kilometer cross-country ski relay.<\/p>\n
The event dates to the original Olympics in 1924 and opens with a ski jump that determines the starting order for the cross-country ski race. The rest of the field starts behind the leader according to the ranking from their jump. The first to cross the line is the winner.<\/p>\n
The hybrid contest, which is the only winter sport without women, faces elimination from the International Olympic Committee because it draws a small audience and is dominated by Norway, Austria, Germany and Japan. The IOC is due to make its decision later this year.<\/p>\n
The podium at all three events that ended in the Tesero Cross-Country Skiing Stadium has featured the same three countries.<\/p>\n
Jens Luraas Oftebro of Norway, who ran away with gold in the normal and large hill individual events, teamed up with Andreas Skoglund to capture a third medal for the country that invented the sport.<\/p>\n
Ilkka Herola and Eero Hirvonen of Finland, who each took a bronze in the first two events, won their first silver medals.<\/p>\n
Johannes Lamparter of Austria, who won silver medals in the individual events, shared the bronze with Stefan Rettenegger.<\/p>\n
Germany had the best score after the ski jump and got a 13-second jump on Norway in the ski race. Japan started 21 seconds back, Finland was 27 seconds behind and Austria had a 29-second deficit.<\/p>\n
The U.S. team of Niklas Malacinski and Ben Loomis finished seventh.<\/p>\n
Melley and Gatopoulos write for the Associated Press.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TESERO, Italy \u2014 Norway swept the Nordic combined events at the Milan-Cortina Winter Games with a victory in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":184683,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[5167,81181,12167,48,52,51,47,50,49,63,87167,81433,13824,87168,7785,87169,87171,87170,10832,316,42022],"class_list":{"0":"post-184682","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-associated-press","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-getty-images","11":"tag-la","12":"tag-la-headlines","13":"tag-la-news","14":"tag-los-angeles","15":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","16":"tag-los-angeles-news","17":"tag-los-angeles-times","18":"tag-medal-count","19":"tag-milan-cortina-olympic-games","20":"tag-result","21":"tag-richard-heathcote","22":"tag-schedule","23":"tag-short-tracker-speedskater","24":"tag-tara-peterson","25":"tag-u-s-curler-taylor-anderson-heide","26":"tag-update","27":"tag-wednesday","28":"tag-winter-olympics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}