A warming planet and rising costs threaten the future of the Winter Games, as host cities struggle with a lack of investment…and snow.
The July 31 deadline for companies to bid to build Italy’s expensive new bobsleigh track for the 2026 Winter Olympics.
And not a single construction company showed up.
SIMICO, the Italian company in charge of managing all the Olympic structures, announced in bewilderment that it will now be forced to search the market for companies capable of taking on the job.
“It’s not particularly surprising that nobody wants to build a new bobsleigh track,” said Madeleine Orr, a sports ecologist at Loughborough University’s Institute of Sport Business in London, alluding to controversy over the project since it was awarded to the cities of Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo the honor – and the burden – of hosting the 2026 Winter Olympic Games.
“I know that the organizers of the Olympic Games have been concerned about how climate change is going to affect this event,” he added.
Over the past two years, the efforts cities have made to prepare for the Games have also been criticized by the Italian press as too costly and environmentally unsustainable, with many pointing out that structures built ad hoc hoc for the event will have no use once the event is over.
The new bobsleigh track – which will have to be built from scratch after the demolition of the old one – is estimated to cost between 93 and 120 million euros, according to Veneto president Luca Zaia. Its construction must be quick, since the finished track, which can also be used for competitions in skeleton and lugeshould be ready in December 2024 for the first test run prior to the Olympic Games.
The changing face of the Winter Olympics
Both the Winter and Summer Olympics face some of the same problems when it comes to climate change, Orr explained to Euronews, “where strange weather patterns are on the rise, which are becoming the new normal.”
“Before, you could expect winter to be cold and summer to be hot,” Orr added. “Now we’re seeing warm winters and even hotter summers, and it’s getting to a point where in many cases it’s becoming unsafe to race in those conditions,” he said.
In the case of winter sports, the impact of climate change is even more dramatic. “Most of the slopes, all but one in St. Moritz, are man-made and use artificial ice and snow, so they rely on power systems that can do a good job of keeping them relatively cold. But even with full technology, if it’s very hot, it will be quite a challenge,” he said.
Most of the recent venues for the Winter Olympics have had artificial snow, a very common resource that is normally used in almost all ski resorts in the world, Walker Ross, professor of Sports Management and Digital Marketing, explained to Euronews. from the University of Edinburgh.
“Every ski resort you go to has extra artificial snow, as they’re trying to stay open for as long as it’s profitable, it’s a very common practice,” he said. “But in Beijing (host of the last Winter Olympics), every snowflake was artificial. And I hope that’s not the trend in the future,” he added.
But that could, in fact, be a possible solution, especially considering that the number of cities that can host the Winter Olympics is expected to drop dramatically in the near future.
Daniel Scott, professor of geography at the University of Waterloo (Canada), directed a study in 2022 according to which, if we do not reduce emissions significantly, by the end of the century only one of the 21 cities that hosted the Winter Olympic Games could have the ideal temperatures to celebrate them.
“If we take into account the global average temperature rise forecasts from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we will see that up to half of the cities that hosted the Winter Olympic Games in the past will no longer be able to host them in the future.” Ross stated.
These communities will not have the necessary temperatures to host these types of sports, Ross stressed, although that will not prevent them from continuing to do so, as long as they depend on artificial snow.
The lost legacy of the Games
Countries have always embraced the Olympic Games – winter or summer – for the obvious traditional benefits such as boosting tourism, widespread enthusiasm for the sport and the opportunity to build key infrastructure that will be used for decades.
That may no longer happen in the future, as critics in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezza fear.
“What we are building now or have built may not be usable in the future,” Ross said. “If we go out of our way to build a gigantic winter sports complex, it may not be climate viable in the future. If our planet warms 1.5C or 3C in the future, that infrastructure, that legacy, that good will will be lost in the long run, because we may not be able to enjoy that sport.
In places like Rio de Janeiro, Ross said, sports facilities were built in low-lying regions that are expected to be flooded from time to time, and these events are expected to become more frequent in the future.
“Whatever we thought we were doing building the Olympics now, thinking that 50 years from now we’ll still be able to remember these great times we had in our city because we’ll still be able to do X, Y and Z… that might not be possible if the scenario does not change”.
Throw money at the problem
Rising costs and the devastating impact of the climate crisis are issues that have proven to make or break mega sporting events.
The Australian state of Victoria recently backed out of hosting the Commonwealth Games in 2026, claiming the cost was too high, leaving the future of the competition in limbo. Adding insult to injury, the Canadian province of Alberta canceled its bid to host the 2030 Commonwealth Games, citing its rising costs.
The estimated cost of organizing the games, of 2,700 million Canadian dollars (more than 1,800 million euros), was a burden “too high for the province to assume”, declared the Minister of Tourism and Sport, Joseph Schow. The decision leaves the Commonwealth Games with no clear venue for 2030.
Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s wealthiest countries with a disturbing record of human rights violations, has secured some of the biggest sporting events on the planet for years to come, as it is simply one of the few willing hosts that can have considerably large pockets.
In 2029, the country will host the Asian Winter Games, despite the fact that snow is rare in Saudi Arabia.
“The number of communities that have the capacity to host these events and have the climate to do so is shrinking quite rapidly,” Ross said. “Since these communities lack the climate to host this event, they may start turning to anyone willing to give them the money to host it,” she added.
Orr believes that, in the case of the Winter Games, “it’s going to have to take a little step back from the big event, the big spectacle, because a lot of the places that have a climate that can host this don’t necessarily have the infrastructure touristy enough to house something of that caliber”.
“If we can change the mindset a bit about what the Winter Olympics are like, and make it a somewhat smaller event, then suddenly it would be an option to host them in much smaller tourist cities,” Orr said.
But reducing or cutting back on these events might not be what the IOC wants, Ross added, both for the benefits and for the sake of expanding access to sports. “I worry about the kind of future the Olympic Games will have if it becomes a mere question of who has the money to fix this problem, instead of asking how we can radically rethink what these events are like and where they are held.”
What will be the future of the Winter Olympics?
No venue for the 2030 Winter Olympics has yet been designated, although the IOC has claimed Salt Lake City, Barcelona and Sapporo are in the running.
But there may not be as many options in the future. The body said it is considering rotating the Winter Olympics among an approved group of climate-reliable venues, as cities may have to meet new temperature criteria as the impact of the climate crisis continues to worsen.
The IOC is currently considering a proposal which would require host cities to have had an average minimum temperature below 0C for the venues of snow competitions for a period of 10 years prior to the Games.
Another solution that the body is studying is the option of awarding the 2030 and 2034 Games to the same city, but no concrete decision has yet been made.
