Will Winter Games stick to snow and ice sports?
Report says IOC to reject proposal to add summer sports to cold-weather Olympics.
Mathieu Van Der Poel of Netherlands, left, competes to win the men's Cyclocross World Championships in Tabor, Czech Republic, Feb. 4, 2024. | Petr David Josek It looks like there won’t be any summer sports at Utah’s 2034 Winter Games after all.
Despite a push to add cross-country running, cyclocross, and even judo and other sports already in the Summer Games, the International Olympic Committee is staying with only snow and ice sports for the Winter Games. That’s according to a new report out of Japan ahead of this week’s IOC Executive Board meeting, where the findings of IOC President Kirsty Coventry ’s “Fit for the Future” policy reviews are expected to be discussed. Coventry and other IOC leaders have conveyed “they will stick to the Olympic Charter’ s statement of ‘only those sports which are practiced on snow or ice are considered as winter sports’ for the foreseeable future,” Kyodo News reported, citing an unnamed source.
The Japanese news agency said the IOC is “dropping its potential plan” to add summer sports to the next Winter Games, being held in the French Alps in 2030, an idea intended “to curb the expansion of the Summer Games. ” The Kyodo report did not specifically mention cross-country running, which hasn’t been an Olympic sport for more than a century, and what would be a new Olympic sport, cyclocross , which combines road cycling, mountain biking and steeplechase. Why add cross-country, cyclocross to the Winter Olympics?
Adding both cross-country and cyclocross to the Winter Games has been advocated by Sebastian Coe , an IOC member who also heads World Athletics, the international federation for track and field. Last October, Coe told Britain’s Guardian newspaper there was “a provisional plan” to hold cross-country and cyclocross on the same course during the 2030 Winter Games, and that moving some Summer Games sports held indoors there was also being considered. “I think there’s a good chance it’ll happen,” Coe said, noting that the addition of a track and field event “also gives Africa a proper presence in the Winter Games, which, if we are being honest, it doesn’t really have.