MILAN - The Milano Cortina Olympics have shown an example of a sustainable winter games for the future. You don't want to be building loads of infrastructure in precarious mountain resorts, which have fragile ecosystems. By utilizing existing sport facilities and hosting the games in four clusters in different cities and towns, they shared the load. It was sensible and judicious.
I understand that for the International Olympic Committee, the tradition of the Olympics is about a single urban city being central to celebrating the symbolic virtues, in which the games can spill over out of the stadiums into the wider urban fabric. But in the winter games, reality looms.
Four years ago in Beijing, the Chinese were saying that they were going to build a whole new winter sports industry on the back of all the investments that are going to employ hundreds of thousands of people. I don't see that happening.
The Milan Cortina Games are certainly a relatively modest winter games. The opening ceremony was modest and kind of low key and amusing. A certain amount of effort has been made to reduce the carbon footprint of the event.
On the other hand, I feel a sort of grief that we are sleepwalking into the future where events like this will be virtually impossible in most of the world. We have got an Italian state oil company as one of the main sponsors. We are still flying in thousands upon thousands of athletes and coaches. I am struggling with that.
It seems to be such a terrible kind of contradiction -- one that reflects global politics. It's like we all know where we are going yet it seems impossible to turn the ship round.
To protect our winter sports, I think one has got to listen to the athletes who absolutely see what climate change is doing to winter sports. Not just the Olympics but the whole world of winter sports has got to up its game on climate action.
Just before the Milan Cortina Olympics began, one of Norway's oldest ski manufacturers closed down, saying people just aren't skiing enough anymore because there's not enough snow to ski on. That's the future unless we make some really big changes.
The IOC says they are considering moving summer events to winter, but that is a terrible idea. It may be practical and compatible but symbolically and culturally ridiculous. The winter games are a very distinct set of sporting cultures, from very distinct ecosystems around the world. You wouldn't want to dilute the magic of the winter Olympics.
(David Goldblatt is a visiting professor at Pitzer College in Los Angeles. Born in 1965, he teaches sports sociology and writes the book "The Games. A Global History of the Olympics.")
