New sports and athletes to watch at the Milano-Cortina Olympics

The countdown to the 2026 Milano-Cortina Olympic Games has begun. And after another European city's post-pandemic Olympics success, expectations are high for the upcoming cold season event. 

Although there are still some kinks to iron out — cough, hockey rink, cough — athletes are gearing up for a nail-biting two weeks with new events and changed formats. 

We decided to round up a few of the alterations being made to the Winter Olympics in the fashionable city of Milan and pretty mountains of Cortina d'Ampezzo. Here's some of what you can expect. 

There are eight new medal events coming to the 2026 Milano-Cortina Games, three of which make up a whole new discipline: ski mountaineering. The sport is considered an endurance one in which athletes climb uphill, often on skis with special skins, and then race back down on skis. The 2026 program at the Stelvio Ski Centre in Bormio includes women's and men's sprint races and a mixed-gender relay. 

Also entering the Games this year are dual moguls in freestyle skiing, pitting two skiers in a head-to-head race on parallel courses where judges decide whose performance they prefer. Other additions to existing disciplines include women's doubles in luge, women's large hill ski jumping, a mixed team skeleton event and a team combined alpine skiing event.

The International Olympics Committee (IOC) has said the 2026 Games would be the most "gender-balanced" in Olympic Winter Games history, with women making up 47 per cent of competing athletes this year. 

But there's still one notable discipline where women aren't competing: Nordic combined, a sport that features cross-country skiing and ski jumping. 

Anna Malacinski, a 24-year-old athlete, has spoken out against the exclusion of women