TESSELLO, Italy — Norway won the team sprint Thursday to win the Nordic combined event at the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics in what could be the sport’s final Olympic appearance.

In the two-person 15km cross-country ski relay, Finland won the silver medal despite suffering a dramatic loss in the home straight sprint, and Austria won the bronze on a day that was difficult to travel due to a snowstorm.

“It feels incredibly good, I don’t think it’s fully sunk in yet,” said Norway’s Jens Lulers Oftebro. “It was a very exciting finish. I wasn’t going to decide the race on the last sprint. I’m not that cruel.”

The event dates back to the 1924 Winter Olympics and begins with a ski jump that determines the starting order of the cross-country ski race. The rest of the field will start behind the leader according to their jump order. The first person to cross the line is the winner.

The hybrid contest, the only winter sport without women, faces exclusion from the International Olympic Committee due to low spectator numbers and being dominated by Norway, Austria, Germany and Japan. The IOC is expected to make a decision later this year.

The same three countries were on the podium in all three events that ended at the Tessero Cross-Country Ski Stadium.

Norway’s Oftebro, who ran away with gold in the normal and large hill individual events, teamed up with Andreas Skoglund to win the third medal for the country that invented the sport.

“Above all, it’s great to be able to crown a really strong championship with this result,” Oftebro said.

Finland’s Ilka Herola and Eero Hirvonen won their first silver medal after winning bronze in the first two events.

“Of course, you always dream of a medal, but I don’t know if we were fully expecting this,” Hirvonen said immediately after losing in a sprint finish. “I’m not complaining.

“It was really, really difficult to ski there. You really had to stay focused. Today it felt like we were competing to see who could avoid mistakes. If we didn’t mess up on the downhill and didn’t make mistakes on the course, we were pretty much right in the fight.”

Austria’s Johannes Lamparter won the silver medal in the individual event and shared the bronze medal with Stefan Rettenegger.

Germany recorded the best score after the ski jump and had a 13 second advantage over Norway in the ski race, with Japan starting 21 seconds behind. However, the harsh race conditions took a toll on both teams.

Germany’s Vincenz Geiger and Japan’s Ryota Yamamoto collided, losing valuable time, but soon after, the German lost his footing again.

The U.S. team of Niklas Malacinski and Ben Loomis finished seventh.