Europe’s Rising Diversity is not Reflected at the Winter Olympics. Culture Plays a Big Role

Maryan Hashi, a Somali immigrant who arrived in Sweden as a teenager, discovered snowboarding through a municipal integration program and overcame initial feelings of being an outsider to make the sport her passion. Despite Sweden's significant immigrant population—with roughly 2 million of 10 million residents born abroad—the country's Winter Olympics team remains almost entirely ethnically Swedish, reflecting a broader lack of diversity across European winter sports. Researchers attribute this gap to parental influence, cultural barriers, financial constraints, and geographical factors, as immigrants typically settle in urban areas far from ski resorts and lack familiarity with winter sports from their countries of origin.