Norway swept the Nordic combined events at the Milan Cortina Winter Games in what could be the final time the sport is featured in the Olympics.

Nordic combined is the only Olympic sport that doesn't allow women to compete, despite athletes' efforts to change that. They say their odds for 2030 hinge on people watching men's events this week.

The sport has been included since the first Winter Games in 1924, but it is the only winter sport that doesn’t include women. Female athletes who compete on the World Cup tour and in world championships have lobbied hard to change that. But their fate is tied to the larger sport.

Nordic combined — ski jumping and cross-country in one — remains the only Winter Olympic sport that does not include women, even though women compete on the World Cup circuit and at world championships. “It’s heartbreaking, it really is,” U.S. team skier Annika Malacinski told the Associated Press.

Norway's Jens Lurås Oftebro won his third gold of the Milan/Cortina Olympics in the Nordic combined team sprint on Thursday as Germany - thanks to a double fall - ended a Winter Games without a medal in the discipline for the first time since 1998.

Jens Luraas Oftebro, left, swept all three Nordic combined competitions. Anne-Christine Poujoulat / AFP via TESERO, Italy — Ski jumping and cross-country skiing through steady snowfall, Norway’s Andreas Skoglund and Jens Lurås Oftebro won what could be the final gold medal ever handed out in Nordic combined at the Winter Olympic Games,

Reigning World Cup champion Vinzenz Geiger fell not once but twice in the concluding super team event as Nordic combined powerhouses Germany finished without a medal in the sport for the first time in 28 years.

Nordic combined closed on a bittersweet note at the Winter Games, with these Olympics possibly the sport's last and women glaringly missing from competition.

Nordic combined is the only Olympic sport at Milan-Cortina that does not have a women's event. BBC Sport takes a look at why.

Norway's Jens Luraas Oftebro won his second Nordic combined gold medal at the Winter Olympics after the large hill ski jump and 10-kilometer ski race.