The long-discussed possibility of establishing a new system to rotate future Winter Games among a set group of permanent hosts is still on the table for the International Olympic Committee.
“It is definitely something we will work at,” IOC President Kirsty Coventry said at a news conference Wednesday following a meeting held in Milan, Italy, ahead of the 2026 Winter Games that begin in just two days.
The intent is “to find the right way to analyze that option, and what that would look like, so that we’re also just basing it off the facts,” she said, adding that such changes “can’t just be for the next couple of years. We really have to look far down into the future.”
Utah was described as an ideal candidate for a rotational system Tuesday after IOC members heard the Organizing Committee for the 2034 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games’ first formal presentation.
“We’ve started talking about the rotation model,” newly elected IOC Executive Board member Jae Youl Kim of South Korea said in the only comment made about the report. “Salt Lake City could be a great model.”
Fraser Bullock, the organizing committee’s president and executive chair, told reporters after the presentation that “Salt Lake would always love to host the Games. We’ll take them any time we can.”
Bullock also said Utah organizers recognize that any new selection system would have to strike “a balance between universality and having a lot of countries participate, but also the reality of climate change and sustainability.”
Wednesday, IOC members met behind closed doors to talk about the progress of the working groups Coventry established after her election last year to review policies on everything from how hosts are selected to what’s called the protection of the female category.
The new president said a rotation system for choosing Winter Games hosts was not discussed Wednesday. But she said there’s agreement as a result of consulting with “a number of different stakeholders that it’s something that we should look at.”
Any decisions about putting such a system in place aren’t likely to be made anytime soon. The working groups intended to make the IOC “fit for the future,” are expected to present their initial findings in June, determining the direction of the Switzerland-based organization.
“This is going to be one of those areas that we would need to do some serious work with the different stakeholders, with IFs (international sports federations), NOCs (national Olympic committees), with athletes, to see if that is really a viable option for the future,” Coventry said.
Later Christophe Dubi, the IOC’s Olympic Games executive director, told the Deseret News there may in fact already be a natural rotation of the Winter Games, determined by the impacts of climate change on the ability to keep and make snow.
There are other factors that limit future hosts, Dubi said.
“There is a lot of debate regarding how far the venues can be from the city center,” he said. “We have to recognize that geography is not the same in the U.S., in Utah, or in the Alps” or in places like China.
“You have to work with the lay of the land,” Dubi said. “Rotation where we have winter conditions, where you can either have natural or produced snow because it is cold enough, that really matters. Then, the Games will have to adapt with those terrains.”
When it comes to maintaining support for an ongoing host, he said, Utah may have an advantage.
Utah has “a certain political context,” Dubi said, a reference to the widespread backing among political leaders like Gov. Spencer Cox for hosting even more Winter Games beyond 2002 and 2034.
“In other countries it can be more volatile,” he said, noting support can swing wildly. “In Utah, you have one great advantage. You have done it. It’s been massively successful and people can see that.”
On the business side, in the United States “there is an appetite for sport that is amazing. In other areas, it could be harder to mobilize so much resources. So it’s political but it’s economics as well,” Dubi said.
“It’s not that easy to say, ‘OK, rotation and every time, we go back,’” Dubi said. “Utah we know. Elsewhere, not necessarily.”