Lord Coe Explores Integrating Indoor Summer Sports into Winter Olympics

Lord Coe, the head of World Athletics, has indicated his willingness to explore the transfer of certain indoor disciplines from the Summer Olympics to the Winter Games, should he be elected as the next president of the International Olympic Committee. The British two-time Olympic 1500m gold medalist released his manifesto on Thursday morning, presenting it alongside the platforms of the six other contenders vying to replace Thomas Bach in the upcoming year. He stated to BBC Sport that “Innovation is critical, we have to be open to new ideas.” Coe has pledged to reform the IOC, asserting that “too much power is in the hands of too few people.” Characterizing the election as “the dance I just couldn’t sit out,” Coe remarked: “The question I ask myself as a member is – ‘what input do I and other members have?’ “And the reality of it is, there isn’t enough. I’m not sure we’re making the most of the extraordinary talent that sits alongside me. The IOC is not a broken organisation but it can be so much better and it needs change.” Within his proposals, Coe reiterates prior commitments to promote youth sport, implement “clear, science-based policies” to safeguard the female category amidst ongoing discussions in sports regarding gender eligibility criteria, and to engage with athletes. He further stated: “To sustain the Games we must grow – not just financially but also in reach and relevance. Commercial partners and broadcasters want modernisation.” Speaking from the Olympic Park in Stratford, Coe, who previously chaired the London 2012 organizing committee, additionally commented: “Climate change is going to fundamentally make us have to think about the global calendar, where we take our events and the times of the year that we take our events.” He noted that “And some people have even suggested that we might want to look at the balance between the winter and summer Games.” Coe elaborated: “You have venues where some sports are indoors. You could in theory take them into another time of the year, maybe a winter Games. “So these are all the things that I would encourage debate to take place on, because only when we have that debate can we discard the things that may not work.” He emphasized: “Only in collaboration with the winter sports and all those organisations out there. We have the Association of National Olympic Committees. We have the summer federations that are represented, and some of that has to be a collaborative approach. But I think we should always be open to new and fresh thinking.” Last year, the IOC reported that studies indicated only 10 nations would be capable of hosting snow sports by 2040 due to climate change, acknowledging “a need to adapt the Olympic Winter Games.” The Winter Olympics currently feature four indoor disciplines: speed skating, figure skating, curling, and ice hockey. Under Coe’s leadership, World Athletics made a contentious decision to introduce prize money for gold medalists at Paris 2024. He commented: “Many of the things I’ve done at World Athletics have sparked a debate,” adding, “That’s not something I shy away from. In a world that changes every five minutes, we have to be very open to analysis that doesn’t always fit comfortably with how we see the world. And we should embrace that.” Coe pledged to prevent a recurrence of the Olympic boxing dispute from this summer, where Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting, two athletes who had been disqualified from the prior year’s World Championships for purportedly not meeting gender eligibility standards, secured gold medals after the IOC permitted their participation. Both athletes have maintained they are women. Coe stated: “On the female category, it was non-negotiable [to include it in the manifesto].” He added: “If you don’t have clear policies, you end up with where you got to in Paris. The comforting thing for me is that it could not have happened in athletics.” Under Coe’s tenure, World Athletics has prohibited transgender women from participating in the female category at international competitions and has strengthened regulations concerning the involvement of athletes with differences in sex development (DSD). Olympic scheduling will need greater flexibility, according to Samaranch. Coe is contending for the IOC presidency against Spain’s Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr, France’s David Lappartient, Zimbabwe’s Kirsty Coventry, Japan’s Morinari Watanabe, Sweden’s Johan Eliasch, and Prince Feisal al Hussein of Jordan. Samaranch, whose deceased father led the IOC for 21 years until 2001, states that his primary objective is to safeguard the universality of the Olympic Games. He further asserts that the IOC “has a fundamental duty to safeguard women’s sport by adopting a policy to maintain unambiguous distinctions between men and women’s categories.” Samaranch, an IOC vice-president, defended the organization’s involvement in the Paris boxing controversy, remarking: “Things can always be handled better, but I really think that was a very difficult situation.” He continued: “At the end of the day we were talking about two athletes who had a long career as women athletes, that were born women, that had been educated women, that had competed in World Championships and previous Olympics as women.” And concluded: “So we defended their right to participate, and we had to stick to our guns.” He informed BBC Sport that the conventional Summer Olympics might need to take place during the northern hemisphere winter in the future, asserting: “We’re going to have to be more flexible in scheduling the dates at which the Games can happen.” When questioned about his openness to the event being hosted in Saudi Arabia, which is set to host the men’s World Cup in 2034, the IOC vice-president responded: “If I’m true to my claim for universality, we have to be universal also in the regions of the world that can organise the Games.” He continued: “Even if [we] go into the winter, we cannot say to more than one billion people in parts of the world that are too warm to hold the Games during the summer ‘sorry, you’re out’. We cannot. Honestly, I think it’s not fair. “Since the climate is not going to adapt itself to our calendars, we will have to adapt our calendar to the weather.”” Samaranch and Prince Feisal, both members of the IOC executive board, have committed to empowering members and have vowed to increase their retirement age from 70 to 75 years. Japanese candidate Morinari Watanabe, who serves as president of the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG), has put forward a proposal to host the Olympics concurrently across five cities spanning five continents. In its 130-year existence, the IOC has been led by nine men and has never had a female president.