GENEVA — Organizers of traditional snow and ice sports said Wednesday they do not want events from summer federations added to their Winter Olympics program.
Cyclocross and cross-country running — even indoors sports — have been suggested as additions to the Winter Games for the 2030 Olympics hosted in the French Alps and Nice.
Those would be unwelcome “piecemeal proposals,” the Winter Olympic Federations group of governing bodies said in a statement.
“The Winter Olympic Federations are firm in our belief that such an approach would dilute the brand, heritage, and identity that make the Olympic Winter Games unique — a celebration of sports practiced on snow and ice, with distinct culture, athletes, and fields of play,” said the group of sports including skiing, skating, biathlon, curling, luge, bobsled and skeleton.
A review of the Winter Games program and other issues was started by International Olympic Committee president Kirsty Coventry after she formally took office in June.
The winter program with just 116 medal events has room to expand compared with the squeezed Summer Games which had 329 in Paris last year.
Adding cyclocross and cross-country running, which typically are raced on mud, would mean amending the IOC’s Olympic Charter rules which require Winter Games sports to be played on snow and ice.
“Innovation should focus on evolving existing winter sports to attract broader participation and audiences while enhancing the appeal of the Olympic Winter Games,” said Ivo Ferriani, who represents winter sports on the IOC executive board as president of the bobsled and skeleton federation.
Ferriani noted the addition of ski mountaineering, or skimo, which makes its Olympic debut in February at the Milan Cortina Winter Games.
Olympic influence
Cyclocross and cross-country running have influential supporters in Olympic circles which created momentum toward a proposal for 2030.
The presidents of the governing bodies of cycling and track and field — David Lappartient and Sebastian Coe, respectively — both were candidates in the IOC election won by Coventry.
Still, the proposal did not convince the top official at the International Biathlon Union.
“If they were super popular sports they would already be in the Summer Games, and they’re not,” Max Cobb, the American secretary general of the IBU, told The Associated Press in a recent interview about reaction among winter sports.
“There wasn’t anybody thinking, ‘Oh, what a good idea.’ We’re all scratching our head,” Cobb said in Lausanne, stressing any Winter Games additions should come from “the family of snow and ice sports.”
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