MILAN, Italy (AP) — Annika Malacinski remembers the moment the door to the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics was slammed shut.
On a flight from Munich to Denver, she bought airplane Wi-Fi to join a conference call with the International Olympic Committee, certain that Nordic combined competition would at last be opened up to female athletes.
“Then the decision came: ‘no.’ No explanation, no discussion. Just ‘no,’ and then they moved on to the next topic,” she told The Associated Press from her training base in Norway. “I cried for eight hours straight on that flight. When I arrived in Denver, my eyes were swollen shut. It felt like my world had crashed.”
That was in June, 2022. And despite an ongoing campaign led by Malacinski, an athlete from Colorado now aged 24, her sport remains the last to exclude women – even as Milan Cortina is showcasing the highest level of female participation in Winter Games history at 47%.
Malacinski is a frequent top-10 finisher at elite competitions in the sport that combines ski jumping and cross-country skiing and demands rigorous year-round training.
Her younger brother, Niklas, will compete in the men’s event for the United States and she plans to travel to northern Italy to cheer him on.
“It’s bittersweet. I know how hard he works, and he absolutely deserves it,” Malacinski said. “I do the same sport as him. I jump the same ski jumps and ski the same courses. The only difference is that I’m a woman.”
Female skiers racing in Seefeld, Austria, last weekend protested the exclusion by raising their poles overhead to form an X.
Men have competed in the Nordic combined since the first Winter Games more than a century ago, at Chamonix, France in 1924.
The sport is now at risk of being removed from the program at the next Winter Olympics in 2030. The IOC says Nordic combined has struggled to attract participation from enough countries and draws a limited television audience.
Women were excluded entirely from the first modern Olympics in 1896. When they were allowed to compete in Paris four years later, participation was limited to a handful of sports, including tennis, archery and croquet.
Track and field opened to women only in 1928, at the Amsterdam Games – but restrictions were imposed around beliefs of female fragility. Although the 800 meters was originally included, it was later withdrawn for more than three decades.
The first women’s Olympic marathon did not take place until 1984 in Los Angeles – 88 years after the race inspired by an ancient Greek battle debuted.
Nearly all differences have since been eliminated, though some disparities remain. At the Summer Olympics, women compete in the seven-event heptathlon, while men contest the 10-event decathlon.
At the Winter Games, progress arrived even later. Ski jumping was off-limits to women as recently as the 2010 Vancouver Olympics and was introduced four years later at Sochi.
Cross-country skiing’s distance overhaul is the most recent and sweeping change. At Milan Cortina, men and women will race the same distances across all events for the first time in Olympic history.
Previously, the longest women’s race topped out at 30 kilometers, compared with 50 for men. Both will now have 50-kilometer mass start races — like at Nordic Ski World Championships last year.
Malacinski says she will continue her campaign for inclusion, now focused on 2030 Winter Games in the French Alps.
“I’m a very gritty person,” she said. “If I put my mind to something, I know I can do it.”
AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics
FILE - Annika Malacinski of the United States soars through the air during the women's individual compact NH 5km competition at the Nordic Combined World Cup in Ramsau, Austria, Saturday, Dec.16, 2023. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader, File)
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A new Tennessee law has eased up on two longstanding financial hurdles for people with felony sentences who want their voting rights back, including a unique requirement among states that they must have fully paid their child support costs.
The Republican-supermajority Legislature approved the Democratic-sponsored change, which now lets people prove they have complied for the last year with child support orders, such as payment plans. The legislation also unties the payment of all court costs from voting rights restoration.
Advocates for years have sought various changes to Tennessee’s voting rights restoration system at the statehouse and in court. They say loosening these two rules marks the biggest rollback of restrictions to voting rights restoration in decades.
“This is huge and this is history,” said Keeda Haynes, senior attorney for the advocacy group Free Hearts led by formerly incarcerated women like her.
Most Republicans voted for it and Democrats supported it unanimously. The law took effect immediately upon Republican Gov. Bill Lee's signature last week.
“I think people are at a point where they want to just remove the barriers out of the way and allow people to be fully functional members of society,” said Democratic House Minority Leader Karen Camper, a bill sponsor.
In 2023 and early 2024, the state decided that the system did require going to court or showing proof of a pardon, not just a paperwork process, and that gun rights were required to restore the right to vote. Election officials said a court ruling made the changes necessary, though voting rights advocates said officials misinterpreted the order.
Last year, lawmakers untangled voting and gun rights. But voting rights advocates opposed some of the bill's other provisions, such as keeping the process in the courts, where costs can rack up if someone isn't ruled indigent.
Easing up on the financial requirements uncommonly split legislative Republicans. For instance, Senate Speaker Randy McNally voted against it, while House Speaker Cameron Sexton supported it, noting that people aren't getting forgiveness on making their payments.
“They need to continue paying that, and as long as they do, then there’s a possibility (to restore their voting rights)," Sexton said. "I really think that’s harder for people to argue against than maybe what something else was.”
Republican Rep. Johnny Garrett, who voted no, said in committee his vote would hinge on whether “there still can be an (child support) arrearage owed beyond that 12 months.”
For some, backed-up child support payments could reach hundreds or thousands of dollars, and court costs could be hundreds or thousands more, said Gicola Lane, Campaign Legal Center's Restore Your Vote community partnership senior manager.
Advocates credited their narrowed focus, omitting goals such as automatic restoration of rights, no longer tying restitution payments to voting rights, or offering a path for certain people to restore their right who are permanently disenfranchised, including those convicted of voter fraud or most murder charges.
The bill passed the Senate last year and the House this year.
Lawmakers gave the child support requirement final passage in 2006 within an overhaul bill that also created a voting rights restoration process outside of court. Critics said the child support rule penalized impoverished parents.
Democrats were then narrowly hanging onto legislative leadership in both chambers. Republicans held a slim Senate majority but GOP defectors voted for a Democratic speaker.
Last year marked the dismissal of a nearly five-year-old federal lawsuit over Tennessee’s voting-rights restoration system. Free Hearts and the Campaign Legal Center represented plaintiffs in the long-delayed case, which saw some election policy changes along the way.
Roughly 184,000 people have completed supervision for felonies and their offenses don't preclude them from restoring their voting rights, according to a plaintiffs expert’s 2023 estimate in the lawsuit. About one in 10 were estimated to have outstanding child support payments, and more than six in 10 owed court courts, restitution or both, the expert said.
Both Republican and Democratic-led states have eased the voting rights restoration process in recent years. Some states have added complexities.
In Florida, after voters approved a constitutional amendment in 2018 restoring the right to vote for people with felony convictions, the Republican-controlled Legislature watered that down by requiring payment of fines, fees and court costs.
Voting rights are automatically restored upon release in nearly half of states. In 15 others, it occurs after parole, probation or a similar period and sometimes requires paying outstanding court costs, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In Maine and Vermont, people with felonies keep their voting rights in prison, the NCSL says.
Ten other states including Tennessee require additional government action. Virginia ’s governor must intervene to restore voting rights of people convicted of felonies. In some states, including Tennessee, certain conviction types render someone ineligible.
However, Virginia lawmakers this year have passed a proposed state constitutional amendment to ask voters whether they want automatic voting rights restoration after someone is released from prison. Kentucky lawmakers have proposed a similar change for voters' consideration that would automatically restore voting rights after certain completed sentences, including probation.
FILE - The Tennessee Capitol is seen, Jan. 22, 2024, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV, File)
