Future Olympics will likely evolve into geographically spread out Games that stretch beyond their host cities, according to the head of the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee.
Sarah Hirshland said on Thursday that as the size of the Games continues to increase, it would be difficult for a single site to have enough venues and logistical support to bear the responsibility of multiple events over several weeks.
“The disbursement of the Games themselves is evolving,” Hirshland said while speaking at the Columbia University Sports Management Conference in New York. “And a lot of that is because the scale of the Games has gotten so big and significant that the infrastructure required to host is very hard to find in a single place.”
With the upcoming 2028 Olympics deep into its planning and rollout phase, one part of the staging has been known for well over a year, with parts of the Games set to be part of a multi-city effort despite substantial resources in Los Angeles.
But the city will not shoulder all of the responsibility and will be supported throughout the surrounding region, with Orange, San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties all contributing in a range of capacities.
Meanwhile, Oklahoma City will host softball and the canoe slalom, while soccer matches will be held in several U.S. cities, including New York City, Columbus, Nashville, St. Louis, San José and San Diego.
The Milano Cortina Winter Games this past February and March are the most recent precedent that a physically spread out event is a strategy that is set to be a standard rather than a suggestion. Milan, Cortina d’Ampezzo, Verona, Livigno, Bormio, Anterselva, Tesero and Predazzo were part of the eight cities and localities that were necessary for the Olympics despite concerns over travel times, environmental impact, costs and losing a feeling of a tighter community that was customary in previous Games.
But organizers contended that using existing venues throughout Italy was a better sustainable play and made more sense than building new infrastructure.
The French Alps will host the 2030 Winter Games and a similar logistical framework is likely to be used, but under a revised plan that will consolidate ice sports in Lyon rather than Nice. Haute-Savoie will be used for Nordic events, Savoie for its exceptional winter sports facilities and Briançonnais for mountain events. Speed skating will be staged in Heerenveen, in the Netherlands, at an existing indoor arena.
However, organizers of the 2034 Utah Winter Games will maintain a tighter program to contain the events in and around Salt Lake City, straying from the wider reach used by Milano Cortina and ultimately in the French Alps.
