How Nordic combined is scored in the Olympics:
Nordic combined is a sport that couples the elegance and technical grace of ski jumping with the stamina of cross-country skiing. It took off in popularity at the 1988 Calgary Games, where a more fan-friendly scoring system was introduced to eliminate the hours it had taken the judges to compare ski jump points and cross-country times to determine a winner. In the Gundersen Method, named after its inventor, the judges use the ski jump results to award the first starting position in the pursuit cross-country race; the rest of the competitors' ski-jumping scores are then converted into staggered start times. The second and remaining athletes start seconds or even minutes after the leader. Thus the first athlete across the tape at the end of the cross-country race is the gold medalist.
