Combined, Men

Despite rumours that this event might be dropped from the Olympic programme, it was still there, but with an all-time low of just 27 participants, with only Canada and Switzerland entering the maximum number of racers, four. In the World Cup, the last event was held on 1 March 2020 and was won by 2019 world champion Alexis Pinturault. The reigning world champion from 2021 was Marco Schwarz. Another curiosity was that, to meet the necessary requirements to be eligible to enter this competition, Schwarz and Strolz had to participate in a European Cup downhill at Tarvisio, Italy, in January 2022, in which Schwarz finished 31st and Strolz 39th respectively. On the day before the Beijing race, another downhill training run was held that saw Vincent Kriechmayr in the lead, but he did not compete in the Combined. Asked for the reason, he said that he was testing skiers, probably for his compatriots.

The downhill element took place first, and the start list produced the next interesting fact, as Barnabás Szőllős became the first Israeli to open an Alpine skiing event at the Olympics. There were not a lot of downhill specialists entered but, of them, Aleksander Aamodt Kilde set the pace and finished first ahead of Jack Crawford and Brodie Seger. Following in fourth was Johannes Strolz, the first slalom skier, and he was followed by Marco Schwarz. Down in 11th place was Pinturault, equal with Szőllős, already almost two seconds behind Kilde but even more importantly, 1.17 behind Strolz, and 0.97 behind Schwarz.

A change in the rules from 2018 was that after the downhill, the fastest had to start first in the slalom, so the slalom element was opened by Kilde. He put in a good performance and held off Crawford by 0.09 seconds only to be overtaken by the fourth starter Strolz. As none of the others were able to reach the times of the leaders, the podium was already decided. Neither Schwarz nor Murisier caught them and Pinturault did not finish his slalom run. Surprisingly Szőllős, who had only participated in four World Cup races before, and only one of them was a slalom, set the second-best slalom time to finish sixth overall.

Strolz won gold in this event just as his father Hubert Strolz did in 1988. They became the first father and son to do so in Alpine skiing. This triumph was even more remarkable because Johannes Strolz was kicked out of all Austrian national teams before the start of the season as his results were not good enough. He kept fighting, had to pay all his own expenses, including training, and he prepared his skis by himself for every race.

The win also brought manufacturer Head its third gold medal in the third men’s Alpine skiing event, as well as another bronze, while Atomic took silver. The bronze medal of Crawford was the first ever medal for Canada in this event. With only 17 finishers, the Combined saw the best Alpine skiing results ever for Israel (6th), Ireland (12th), Monaco (13th), and Kosovo (15th), and the best Alpine skiing result ever for a Chinese man (16th). The sixth place also equalled the best ever result for Israel at the Winter Olympics, achieved by the ice dance pair Galit Chait/Sergey Sakhnovsky in 2002.