NEW YORK — With two more Winter Games between now and Utah’s next Olympics in 2034, there’s plenty of time to think big, the CEO of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee said Tuesday.
“There will be a nice run here. But I can tell you, and this is no surprise, the folks in Utah and we at their side as their partners are very excited about also pushing boundaries and doing things that have never been done before around the Winter Games,” the USOPC’s Sarah Hirshland said.
Just what that entails remains to be seen, although both Hirshland and USOPC Chair Gene Sykes, who’s also a member of the International Olympic Committee, endorsed the idea of shifting some events from the Summer Games to the Winter Games.
Their comments came during the two-day Team USA Media Summit being held in midtown Manhattan to preview the next Olympics and Paralympics, the 2026 Winter Games in Milan-Cortina, Italy, that will be just 100 days away as of Wednesday.
Runners and cyclists in the Winter Games?
“It makes great sense,” Hirshland said of a proposal from the head of World Athletics to add cross-country and cyclocross, a mix of road cycling, mountain biking and steeplechase, to the 2030 Winter Games being held in the French Alps.
“It’s logical and it’s the right thing to do,” she said, giving credit to the international track and field federation “for pushing the envelope and trying to stay at the forefront and innovating, and thinking differently about how to present their sport.”
Not only would that engage more athletes from around the world in a Winter Games, it could also makes it more compelling for audiences, Hirshland said, adding that if new sports are added, Team USA will “be right there, trying to be competitive.”
Sykes said it’s “a worthwhile goal” to make the Winter Games more universal.
He pointed out that some 88 countries compete in today’s Winter Games, compared to more than 200 in the summer version, “all the countries that have winter. But Africa, big parts of southeast Asia, South America, many of those countries don’t have a heritage of winter sports.”
There’s “an opportunity that the Winter Games would include as many countries as possible. Given that there’s a limitation that all the sports have to conducted on snow or ice, we have to be creative,” he said, referring to a provision of the IOC’s governing charter.
That provision is currently being studied by a working group on the Olympic program, one of several established by new IOC President Kirsty Coventry to conduct a sweeping review of current policies.
What Utah’s Olympic organizers say about new sports
Fraser Bullock, president and executive chair of the Organizing Committee for the 2034 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, told the Deseret News that Utah is watching to see what comes from the IOC review.
“We look forward to the results of the IOC working group,” said Bullock, who’s in New York City for the summit along with other organizing committee leaders. “We have not studied this topic in depth yet but we will follow the lead of the IOC.”
The privately funded $4 billion budget for the 2034 Games is built on utilizing venues from the 2002 Winter Games but does accommodate about a 40% increase in the number of events since then.
Bullock, who served as chief operating officer in 2002, was upbeat about the financial impact of adding new sports.
“If there is something added, there would be additional revenue as well as costs, and ideally it could be a profit generator for us,” he said. Organizers are counting on private donations, as well as the sale of broadcast rights, sponsorships and tickets to cover their costs.
Bullock didn’t rule out expanding the scope of Utah’s next Olympics beyond the hour’s distance from what will once again be a single athletes village at the University of Utah, even to other parts of the state.
“There are many questions that arise related to this topic. We have to wait and see what comes out of the IOC working group, and then what the IOC recommends,” he said. “Fortunately, we know the operations of the Games well and can thoughtfully react to potential changes.”
The possibility of Utah’s next Winter Games holding cross-country races was raised more than a year ago by Utah Senate Majority Assistant Whip Mike McKell, R-Spanish Fork, an avid runner and co-chairman of the Legislature’s Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games Coordination Committee.
McKell, who also serves on the Games advisory committee, has suggested cross-country running would be an opportunity for organizers to hold an Olympic event outside the Wasatch Front, in a place like St. George.
Differences between next year’s Winter Games and Utah’s in 2034
Hirshland said Utah’s organizing committee is “now emerging” and “beginning to ramp up, through organization, with just a handful of staff members but an enormous community of folks in Utah and Salt Lake who have experience with the Games from 2002.”
They’re working to “build the next generation” of Utahns “who can help steer a home Games,” she said.
Unlike the “fragmented footprint” of next February’s Winter Games, where athletes will be housed in six different locations spread across much of northern Italy, Hirshland said Utah will offer the opposite experience.
“What Mother Nature has granted Utah is an incredible gift of the proximity of an enormous valley and the huge infrastructure of a city with really nice proximity to the mountains,” she said, allowing for a compact Games.
“It’s on us to make that count,” Hirshland said.
In Italy, expectations for Team USA’s success are high. Sykes noted that Italy’s Olympic organizers “if not completely prepared — it’s not going to be like running the Games in New York City, for example — they will be prepared and will have incredible style and elan.”
He said the Milan-Cortina Games “should be a very, very memorable experience.”
The summit being held at the Javits Center, which features members of Team USA, kicked off Monday night with a reception that featured drinks and food, along with a chance to try out the jackets that America’s winning athletes will wear on the medals podium.
The white quilted jackets, lined with a graphic of the red rock formations at Colorado’s Garden of the Gods, located near the USOPC headquarters, come with a special feature — a small plastic pump to inflate them to the desired level of warmth.
“It’s essentially an airbag,” a Nike representative explained, transforming from a windbreaker to a puffer in less than 30 seconds. While inflatable outerwear isn’t new, these jackets rely on specially laminated layers and what the company calls “computational design.”
Paralympic snowboarder Zach Miller, who lives in Millcreek and trains in Park City, wasn’t yet aware of the new technology involved in the podium gear. “That’s crazy,” the veteran of the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing said.
The CEO of Utah’s organizing committee, Brad Wilson, said he saw the jackets earlier Monday during a stop at Nike’s New York City offices for meetings. Wilson said he’d like to see the “interesting combination of fashion and technology” continue through the state’s next Games.