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Europe’s rising diversity is not reflected at the Winter Olympics. Culture plays a big roleBy STEVE DOUGLASUpdated 11:27 AM EST, January 26, 2026Associated PressVASTERAS, Sweden (AP) — Maryan Hashi remembers the thoughts running through her mind when she began hitting the ski slopes in northern Sweden. As a Black woman from Somalia, she felt like an “alien.”“Am I wearing the correct clothing for this? Does it fit? Do I look weird? Am I snowboarding correctly? Do they think it’s weird I’m on the slope?” she said. “But I carried on — I felt if I didn’t, I was never going to commit to anything in my life.”A few years later, snowboarding is the 30-year-old student’s big passion and it is helping her integrate into her adopted country’s society better than she could ever have imagined.What she’d love now is to see other migrants experiencing the same joy.Immigration from Africa and the Middle East has transformed the demographics of Europe in recent decades. And while the growing diversity is reflected in many sports such as soccer — Sweden’s men’s national team has several Black players including Liverpool striker Alexander Isak — it hasn’t made a dent in winter sports. ...The Olympic rosters of France, Germany, Switzerland and other European winter sports nations look a lot like Sweden’s: overwhelmingly white and lacking the immigrant representation seen in their soccer or basketball teams. ...