Olympic winter sports must be played on snow and ice, according to the Olympic Charter.
However, could a muddy field of play get its chance at a future Winter Games, even as soon as in the French Alps in 2030 or Salt Lake City, Utah, in 2034?
How about parquet in an indoor hall? Snow volleyball is ready and waiting.
Photo: AP
Those and other sports on the far fringes of joining the Summer Games, such as flying disk, see a possible path to the less densely packed Winter Games schedule, even as winter sports federations push back.
There are 116 medal events at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, compared with 353 at the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles.
The charter is the code of rules and principles to guide how the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Olympic Games are run.
Article 6.2 could not be clearer: “Only those sports which are practiced on snow or ice are considered as winter sports.”
That legal clarity is now up for review.
On taking office in June last year as IOC president, Kirsty Coventry listened to her fellow IOC members and started “Fit For The Future,” setting up four working groups, including one focused on the program of sports in the Summer and Winter Games.
It pledged to look at “identifying ways for sports to be added to or removed from the program through a clear and transparent process. It will also consider the suggestion that traditional summer or winter sports could cross over.”
Cross-country running and cyclocross, two gloriously muddy events, have been suggested for the 2030 Winter Games by the influential federations for track and field and cycling, led by Sebastian Coe and David Lappartient, respectively. Both were candidates for IOC president in the election that Coventry won last year.
Coe’s enthusiasm for cross-country running is largely about putting African athletes on center stage with a rare chance to win a medal at the Winter Games, which typically lack diversity.
Lappartient was key to assembling the late-developing bid for the 2030 Olympics in the French Alps that now wants to showcase cross-country running and cyclocross at the same venue. One proposed location is La Planche Des Belles Filles, known to cycling fans as a popular climb in recent editions of the Tour de France.
Four-time Tour winner Tadej Pogacar and one of his great rivals Matthieu van der Poel, also a seven-time cyclocross world champion, have been recruited to the campaign to help persuade the IOC.
Snow volleyball was played on an exhibition court for IOC voters to see at the Pyeongchang Winter Games in South Korea in 2018.
“If the Olympic movement believes that snow volleyball can help promote the Winter Games I would say: ‘Why not?’” International Volleyball Federation president Fabio Acevedo said. “It has a special ball for snow, it’s amazing.”
Snow volleyball also could give African teams and Acevedo’s native Brazil a medal chance in winter, because the technical skills for beach volleyball transfer easily to playing on snow, he said.
The packed Summer Games program has found space for surfing, sports climbing, breakdance and lacrosse, but there is a long line of sports waiting.
Leaders of some of those sports were recently in the IOC’s home city Lausanne, Switzerland, for an annual conference where they could meet and mix with Olympic officials to learn about the scope and details of the program review.
“It’s really adaptable, whether it’s on a basketball court or a larger field house,” World Flying Disk Federation president Robert Rauch said when asked if his sport could meet a possible Winter Games need.
One problem with Winter Games expansion is that established snow and ice sports are not keen.
In November last year, the Winter Olympic Federations said “such an approach would dilute the brand, heritage, and identity that make the Olympic Winter Games unique.”
The group represents sports including skiing, skating, biathlon, curling, luge, bobsled and skeleton.
The push for cross-country running and cyclocross was questioned by the American secretary general of the International Biathlon Union, Max Cobb.
“If they were super popular sports they would already be in the Summer Games, and they’re not,” Cobb said.
Amending the Olympic Charter could be done at the members’ annual meeting known as the IOC Session, although not at the eve-of-games gathering in Milan.
In the French Alps in early December last year, IOC vice president Pierre-Olivier Beckers signaled a longer timescale to finalizing the sports program for 2030, likely at an executive board meeting in June.
“We need further study on the proposals for new sports,” he said. “We will only make a decision after Milan Cortina.”
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