Passion, community and forward thinking. How Cross-Country made equality normal

Equal prize money, equal race distances and a shared FIS World Cup calendar. Today, these features are a normal part of Cross-Country Skiing, helping make the discipline one of the strongest examples of gender equality in snow sports. But according to those working closest to the sport, that progress is the result of decades of forward-thinking decisions rather than a recent transformation.

“It’s just been a fact. It’s been normal,” said Doris Kallen, FIS Cross-Country World Cup Coordinator, on the result of decisions taken decades ago, long before equality became a headline in international sport. “We’ve had equal calendars since 1992, and equal prize money since 1992. Only one major decision [equal race distances] is recent. The rest are much older.”

Kallen is careful not to claim the credit. “I don’t think we can take this compliment on ourselves, honestly. We’ve been lucky enough to step into the footprints of people who were forward-thinking. Many people back then took decisions that were 20 or 30 years ahead of their time.”

Cross-Country, she suggests, had two quiet advantages: a deep community of people who do the sport out of passion, and a scale modest enough to allow time to think - but without standing still. “We can't take too long over decisions, as the world is moving too fast and our development would stall. Nowadays we need to both move quickly and make the right choices.”

A major equality milestone which did arrive in recent years was the move to equal race distances, a change that has had a significant impact on the sport. For Synne Dyrhaug, FIS Cross-Country Media Coordinator, who travels the World Cup circuit alongside Kallen, the equal-distance change is both practical and symbolic.

“Organisationally, having the same courses makes things easier, but having the same courses and race distances for both men and women is also a symbol, and an important one,” she said, in conversation with Inside FIS. “It's a really nice way for our sport to show that equality works.”

The signal travels furthest, she believes, to the people who are not yet in the sport. “I think it’s had a huge impact and we’ve seen that with the younger athletes too. It’s a clear signal to them that we’re equal and has been a real source of empowerment for the whole sport, boosting its strength and its attractiveness.”

Nor does Cross-Country's version of equality rest on simple assumptions. For Kallen, fairness is something that needs to be carefully defined each time, rather than taken for granted. “Every time you have a project or an idea, you have to define what equal actually means,” she said. “Our basic message is that we believe everyone can perform. Maybe not at the same speed or time, but everyone can do it, which is why we don’t want limitations.”

"It shouldn't only be understood that women are skiing more now, you also have to realize that some men are skiing less," continued Kallen, on how equal distances were not simply a case of increasing women’s race lengths, with the sport’s overall distance structure also coming in for review. "It’s not about focusing on women only, it’s about focusing on finding a solution for everyone."

Equality has not been the only area where Cross-Country has taken a long-term approach. The same instinct has shaped the sport’s calendar, with a framework that enables the FIS Cross-Country World Cup season to “follow the snow”, grouping events geographically wherever possible to reduce unnecessary travel - designed with both the planet and budgets in mind.

“It was about environmental sustainability but also financial sustainability. With one guideline you can address both,” said Kallen, on a model that has held up even as commercial and broadcast obligations have grown. “We still follow this framework, but we have to take those new obligations into consideration as well.”

A key ingredient is that equality in Cross-Country is treated less as a campaign than as a culture to be maintained. “Building a culture takes time,” Kallen said. “What we can do now is take good decisions too, and guard that culture. I think that’s our job right now.”

“People now have so many choices of what to watch and do, so you need repetition. For example, it took some time for people to realize that the athletes are skiing essentially the same course - so you can’t make major decisions every other year. We have to look after what we have.”

For Dyrhaug, who hailed Cross-Country’s “amazing culture of collaboration, respect and determination to keep developing the sport”, looking after it also means harnessing untapped potential from smaller World Cup venues and snow sports nations.

“We’ve had amazing races, like the World Champs in Trondheim in 2025, which made a huge impact on our sport,” she said. “But we also need to support the smaller World Cup venues and increase the number of athletes coming through from smaller countries. A lot of nations are doing an amazing job, but there's more we can do to help them, and more the bigger nations can do to support the smaller ones.”

Taken individually, equal prize money, equal race distances or a more sustainable calendar may look like separate initiatives. But together they reflect something deeper: a sport willing to think beyond the next season. For Kallen and Dyrhaug, Cross-Country Skiing's progress has been built not on one defining decision, but on decades of passion, community and forward thinking.