Seb Coe Pushing for Cross Country to Be Included at 2030 Winter Olympics

PARIS — The track & field portion of the 2024 Olympic Games begins tomorrow at the Stade de France (or it began today, depending how you feel about the race walk). Ahead of the competition, World Athletics president Seb Coe, a two-time Olympic champion himself in the 1500 meters, gave a wide-ranging press conference on Thursday on the state of the sport.

The big news is that Coe is once again working to get cross country included in the Olympics — the Winter Olympics. Four years ago, Coe and World Athletics pushed for cross country to be included in the 2024 Olympics, which would have been appropriate cross country’s last appearance in the Olympics came at the 1924 Games, also in Paris. But the IOC rejected that proposal.

Olympic track & field technically got underway on Thursday with the race walks ©2023 World Athletics. All Rights Reserved

Coe is not giving up, however. Olympic host cities are allowed to propose new sports to the IOC for their edition of the Games, and Coe has been speaking with David Lappartient, the president of UCI (the global governing body of cycling) about a joint proposal for cyclo-cross and cross country to be included in the Winter Olympics. The program is already set for the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina D’Ampezzo in Italy, but Coe is targeting the 2030 and 2034 Olympics, which last week were awarded to the French Alps and Salt Lake City, respectively.

“We’ve had good discussions – a lot of details still to be sorted – but good discussions about the thought of sharing the same course with cyclocross,” Coe said. “Which in itself would probably add a bit of jeopardy into cross country, which is what we’ve welcomed particularly in the past with some of our recent cross country championships.

“…I’ve always wanted to see cross country back. I think it is obviously more at home in the winter. It is historically and traditionally a winter sport. And it really does give Africa an opportunity to have a really serious part of the Winter Games. We’ll see where we get to but there’s a lot of goodwill. I certainly want it. David’s very keen. I’ve already had tentative discussions with the USOPC and the organizing committee in Salt Lake City. So let’s see where we get to.”

No athlete from an African country has ever medalled at the Winter Olympics, but East African athletes have dominated the World Cross Country Championships throughout the event’s history, even when the race has been staged in cold locations. Giving African athletes a chance to shine at the Winter Olympics is one of the biggest reasons Coe is pushing for the event’s inclusion.

“The Africa issue for me is a really important one,” Coe said.

There are some hurdles to overcome, notably that the IOC requires Winter Olympic sports to be held on snow or ice. Whether World Athletics and the UCI can convince the IOC to budge on that remains to be seen, but it’s certainly possible (though not ideal) to design a cross country race that would be held mostly/entirely on snow.

Quick Take: We’re 100% on board with cross country in the Winter Olympics, but it needs to be done properly

Three years ago, LetsRun.com laid out the case for why Coe should push for cross country in the Winter Olympics, and one of our main arguments was the same as Coe’s: that by including Africa, the Winter Olympics would gain some sorely-needed diversity and become more of a global event.

But we also pointed out that if cross country is to become an Olympic sport, it must be done the right way. When World Athletics tried to get cross country in the 2024 Summer Olympics, it proposed an unappealing 2 x 2 x 2.5k mixed relay event. Coe did not talk about the specifics of the proposed format of cross country in the 2030 or 2034 Olympics, but it would be a mistake to use the relay format. Rather than inventing an entirely new format, the Winter Olympics should embrace the tradition of the sport and use the same 10,000m format as World XC.

The knock on World XC is that the same countries dominate every year — Kenya went 1-2-3-4-5 in the women’s race this year in Belgrade while Kenya, Ethiopia, and Uganda combined to claim 13 of the top 14 places in the men’s race. As a result, many other athletes/countries have given up trying to be competitive at World XC. But with Olympic medals on the line and with no major outdoor championship in Winter Olympic years, cross country at the Winter Olympics could be way more popular than World XC.

LRC from 2021: Seb Coe Is Right: Cross Country Needs to Be in the Olympics — the Winter Olympics

Coe on Grand Slam Track: “I welcome them. It’s a good sign that the sport is heading in the right trajectory.”

Back in February, when details were beginning to trickle out about Michael Johnson‘s then-unnamed track league, Johnson  said he did not view his league as a competitor to the Diamond League. But now that we know the details about Grand Slam Track, it is hard to characterize it as anything else, regardless of what Johnson says.

Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, Josh Kerr, and the other 46 athletes Johnson signs as “racers” will be committing to race a total of eight times per year across four GST meets. Grand Slam Track is not exclusive, meaning athletes can race on the Diamond League circuit as well. But an athlete can only run a finite amount of quality races in one year. Those choosing to run GST will necessarily have to pare back their Diamond League schedule.

Considering he has a vested interest in the Diamond League’s success (World Athletics is a shareholder in the series and Coe serves as Chair of the Diamond League board), LetsRun.com wanted to know Coe’s thoughts on Johnson’s new venture. He was full of praise.

“I don’t see fresh investment as being anything other than a collaborator, not a rival,” Coe said of Grand Slam Track, which has raised $30 million in funding. “That’s just not the way I’ve ever viewed the world. We should be comforted by the fact that [World Athletics CEO] Jon [Ridgeon], our commercial teams, our athletes, the ecosystem of athletics has suddenly become an attractive proposition for external investment. And that’s a good thing.”

That said, Coe did not downplay the enormity of the task that Johnson and his team face. World Athletics tried to create a buzzworthy new event out of thin air in 2018 — remember the Athletics World Cup? — and it was dead on arrival. World Athletics’ next attempt, the World Athletics Ultimate Championships, looks more promising, but it has taken a long time to develop and plan — Coe said World Athletics have been working on it for the last 18-24 months and we are still two years out from the first edition in Budapest in 2026.

“Any additional event – which we would, of course, welcome – has to work,” Coe said. “It has to have quality thresholds. It has to work for the athletes. It has to work for the broadcasters. And this is a complicated landscape. It’s not something that you can just throw together.”

Talk about this article on our messageboard: Imagine if Paul Tergat was a mult-time winter Olympic gold medallist, Seb Coe pushign for xc to be put into Winter Olympics