MILAN (AP) — Staging future Winter Games as early as January and the Paralympic Winter Video games in February is a risk due to the results of warmer temperatures, the Worldwide Olympic Committee mentioned Wednesday.
Each Winter Video games medal was gained in February for the reason that 1964 Innsbruck Olympics opened Jan. 29, and shifting to January would probably disrupt scheduling of storied World Cup races and occasions. It additionally would extra straight conflict with NFL and NBA schedules.
The IOC is now reviewing Olympic Games issues within the first yr of Kirsty Coventry’s presidency and altering the winter version dates is an choice.
“Perhaps we’re additionally discussing to deliver the Winter Olympics just a little bit earlier,” the IOC member overseeing the sports activities program overview, Karl Stoss, informed reporters. “To do it in January as a result of it has an implication for the Paralympics as nicely.”
The Milan Cortina Paralympic Winter Video games will likely be held March 6-15.
The IOC has long acknowledged under Coventry’s predecessor Thomas Bach that altering local weather is a problem for locating future hosts and organizing competitions.
“(March) may be very late as a result of the solar is powerful sufficient to soften the snow,” mentioned Stoss, whose dwelling nation Austria is a conventional energy in Alpine snowboarding and ski leaping.
“Perhaps the Paralympics will likely be in February and the opposite version will likely be in January. That will even be part of our dialogue,” he mentioned on the sidelines of the IOC’s eve-of-Olympics assembly in Milan.
The 100-plus IOC members ought to meet once more in June to make choices concerning the Olympic evaluations, in a program known as “Match For The Future,” and whether or not so as to add new sports activities and occasions to the 2030 French Alps Winter Video games.
The French Alps version is presently anticipated to run Feb. 1-17 and the 2034 Utah Winter Video games from Feb. 10–26.
