Gunder Gundersen

Gunder Gundersen competed in only one Olympic event in Nordic combined at the 1960 Squaw Valley Winter Olympics, but his name has become synonymous with the sport, and with several other sports. Gundersen won a silver medal in Nordic combined at the 1954 World Championships and was a strong medal candidate for the 1956 Winter Olympics, but an arm injury shortly before the competition meant he could not start. He then competed at 1960 Squaw Valley, finishing 11th in his only event.

Gundersen remained involved in the sport. He was technical director for Nordic combined at Lake Placid in 1980. A few years after those Winter Olympics he developed a race technique for the sport that now bears his name – the Gundersen Method. The Gundersen Method is basically a pursuit in the skiing portion of the Nordic combined. In the ski jump phase points are assigned, and those points are converted to a time difference. In the cross-country ski phase, the skiers start at staggered intervals, based on those time differences, with the leaders after the ski jumping starting first. The winner of the overall event is the first athlete to cross the finish line. The Gundersen Method has been adapted for both biathlon and modern pentathlon.