The International Olympic Committee has pushed back a decision on whether cyclocross will join the 2030 Winter Olympics, extending riders’ wait for clarity and intensifying a political fight over what the Winter Games are supposed to be.
IOC communications director Christian Klaue confirmed on 10 December on X (formerly Twitter), as first reported by NieuwsFiets, that the programme and approval of any additional sports for the French Alps 2030 Games will now be decided at the IOC Session in June 2026, rather than December 2025. The call on cyclocross and cross-country running will be wrapped into a broader "Fit for the Future" review of the Winter Olympic programme and athlete quotas.
'Snow or ice' versus mud
The delay comes less than a month after seven major winter sports federations, including the International Skating Union and the International Bobsleigh & Skeleton Federation, issued a joint statement attacking the push to add cyclocross and cross-country running.
Citing the Olympic Charter’s bye-law to Rule 6.2, which says that only sports "practised on snow or ice" count as winter disciplines, the federations warned that bringing in sports traditionally run on mud and grass would undermine the Games’ core identity.
They argued that innovation should focus on evolving existing snow and ice events, rather than importing sports that already sit within the Summer Games’ ecosystem.
On the other side of the argument, UCI president David Lappartient and World Athletics president Sebastian Coe have been lobbying hard for inclusion. Coe told The Guardian in October that "the chance is good" for cyclocross and cross-country running to make the 2030 programme, pointing to their winter season, potential shared venues in the French Alps and the need to narrow the gap between the 116 Winter Olympic medal events and the 329 on the Summer schedule.
For now, the bid is neither dead nor approved. Cyclocross and cross-country running sit in limbo while the IOC weighs legal interpretations of Rule 6, political pressure from both sides and data from the 2026 Milano–Cortina Games. The verdict in June 2026 will decide whether the mud-splattered specialists finally join the Winter Olympics, or remain spectators looking in from the tape.
Cover image: Alex Whitehead/SWpix.com
