There's A Push To Move Some Summer Olympic Sports To The Winter Olympics And It's A Dumb Idea

The Winter Olympics are getting underway in Italy next week, but it turns out there is a movement to try to change the Olympic Charter's definition of what makes a winter sport a winter sport.

According to The Associated Press, Article 6.2 of the Olympic Charter says that, "Only those sports which are practiced on snow or ice are considered as winter sports."

Seems pretty simple. If your game is on snow and/or ice, come on in to the Winter Olympics.

Anything else, see you in the summer.

However, there are a lot of sports that want in on the Olympics, and there are far more Summer Olympic events than there are Winter Olympic events.

So, new IOC President Kirsty Coventree started something called "Fit For The Future," which will, among other things, "consider the suggestion that traditional summer or winter sports could cross over."

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Two sports mentioned as potential candidates for moving to Winter are cross-country running and cyclocross. Why those? Apparently, it's because they're muddy. 

Plus, according to the AP, former Olympian Sebastien Coe is pushing for cross-country to move to because "cross-country running is largely about putting African athletes on center stage with a rare chance to win a medal at the Winter Games, which typically lack diversity."

So, instead of encouraging African nations to develop winter sports programs, you just want to move a sport they're good at to winter?

If that isn't the most woke way of looking at a problem I've ever heard…

A push to move some summer sports to the Winter Olympics is a terrible idea. (Photo by Emmanuele Ciancaglini/Getty Images)

I mean, if we're doing that, someone should've told Jamaica not to put so much effort into building a competitive bobsledding program. Probably would've only been a couple of years before they shifted the 100m to Winter too.

He does realize that the countries that do best in the Winter Olympics are the ones that have snow, right? That it's not some grand conspiracy against athletes of color?

It's just that Norwegians ski before they can walk, and the Dutch emerge from the womb on speedskates (ow), while Africa isn't exactly crawling with ski chalets and hockey rinks.

Conversely, Norwegians don't get to do a ton of running like they do in African nations, because it's cold and/or snowy for a huge chunk of the year.

Other sports being considered are snow volleyball — which works because it's on snow (also, I'm curious what athletes wear for that) — and flying disc.

This is a sign that we have too many Olympic sports. When you have to start moving them around to make them fit, or to meet some kind of medal diversity quota, it's time to pull on the reins. 

In fact, I'd argue the latter is antithetical to the point of the Olympics. You don't just tilt the playing field so that you can cherry-pick which nations might win each medal.

Hopefully, they keep things the way they are.

I like my Winter Sports the way I like my whiskey: on ice… or snow.