Hooray! Alpes 2030 becomes first quota-parity Winter Games

The Alpes 2030 Olympic Winter Games will be the first Olympic Winter Games to achieve gender parity. Building on the progress achieved at Milano Cortina 2026, which delivered the most gender-balanced edition to date, Alpes 2030 is set to reach gender parity by quota allocation for the first time in Olympic Winter Games history.

Female athlete quota places will account for 50 percent of the total quota of 3,046 athletes (1,525 female and 1,521 males, including athletes in ski mountaineering proposed by the Organizing Committee as an additional sport). The program will also achieve parity in terms of events staged, with 56 women’s and 55 men’s events, in addition to 15 mixed events. This was confirmed by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Executive Board on July 7 as part of the discipline and event review.

Four sports will increase women’s participation, with two reaching full parity:

• Luge: from 44.3 to 50 percent
• Skiing: from 48.6 to 50 percent
• Bobsleigh: from 32.9 to 39.5 percent
• Ice hockey: from 43.4 to 45.6 percent.

As part of the review, the IOC EB also said that freeride (ski and snowboard) and synchro9 (figure skating) athletes will make their debut on the Olympic stage. Freeride, which started in the 1990s to develop as a discipline, has since experienced rapid international growth and benefits from a strong youth fanbase. Synchro9, a team event with strong spectator appeal, was officially recognized as a discipline by the International Skating Union (ISU) in the 1990s. Synchro9 will be contested in the existing figure skating venue. Meanwhile, the retention of snowboard parallel giant slalom on the Alpes 2030 program was confirmed, while Nordic combined will not feature at these Games.

The Alpes 2030 discipline and event program was approved by the IOC Executive Board following the recommendations of the Olympic Program Working Group, which gauged the proposals submitted by the International Federations and the Organizing Committee with regard to ski mountaineering.