There’s a “good chance” that cross-country running and cyclocross will be added to the snow and ice events already expected at the 2030 Winter Games in the French Alps, while some Olympic sports could be shifted to future Winter Games.
That could mean big changes are coming for the 2034 Winter Games in Utah.
World Athletics President Sebastian Coe told the Guardian newspaper there’s “a provisional plan” for cross-country and cyclocross, a mix of road cycling, mountain biking and steeplechase, to be held on the same course during the 2030 Winter Games.
He also said moving some indoor sports, such as judo, to future Winter Games is being considered as part of new International Olympic Committee President Kirsty Coventry’s sweeping reviews to ensure the Switzerland-based organization is “fit for the future.”
“I think there’s a good chance it’ll happen,” said Coe, an IOC member. “And I think it’s come at the right moment, because Kirsty is certainly prepared to think differently about the program, and what could go out of the stadium, and that mix between winter and summer.”
The British track and field leader said while he has some “emotional” reasons for wanting cross-country to return to the Olympics after more than 100 years, “it also gives Africa a proper presence in the Winter Games, which, if we are being honest, it doesn’t really have.”
Also on board with the plan for the new winter sports, Coe said, is David Lappartient, the head of the international cycling federation and an IOC member from France. He and Coe were among the seven contenders for the IOC presidency that went to Coventry, who is from Zimbabwe.
What do Utah Olympic leaders say about new winter sports?
Fraser Bullock, president and executive chair of the Organizing Committee for the 2034 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, isn’t ready to talk about the possibility new sports may need to be accommodated.
“It is too soon to comment on the topic of the sport program since our Games are so far out and such discussions are early,” Bullock said. The $4 billion privately funded budget for 2034 already anticipates about 40% more events than the last time Utah held the Olympics, in 2002.
Utah Senate Majority Assistant Whip Mike McKell, R-Spanish Fork, though, is an advocate of adding cross-country races. An avid runner, McKell is co-chairman of the Legislature’s Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games Coordination Committee and on the Games advisory committee.
Back in August 2024, he told the Deseret News he’d like to see cross-country running at Utah’s next Winter Games. He said it would be an opportunity for organizers to hold an event outside the Wasatch Front, in a place like St. George.
“I think we need to be open to opportunity,” McKell has said.
What needs to happen before cross-country, cyclocross could be added
Coventry recently confirmed to reporters that “there have been some different conversations” about cross-country and cyclocross becoming Olympic sports, although the issue was not a topic at last month’s IOC Executive Board meeting.
New IOC Sports Director Pierre Ducrey said there “is interest on the French side to consider such events to be part of their program (for the 2030 Winter Games), so we are discussing it with them.”
But first, Ducrey said the working group established by Coventry to review the Olympic program needs to take a closer look at the definitions of summer and winter sport in the IOC’s governing charter “so that we can find out if there is a path for this to happen or not.”
There is no deadline for any of the four working groups to report their findings. In addition to the Olympic program, there are reviews of what Coventry calls protecting the female category; commercial partnerships and marketing; and the Youth Olympic Games.
The IOC president has said, however, she doesn’t want to see them “going on for months and months.”