Discussion: Winter Olympics Event Expansion

In the NY Times today, in the sports section, there was an article examining the expansion of winter sports in the Olympics - team luge? team figure skating? biathlon mixed relay? There were 57 events in the 1992 games, and 98 in this year's edition. Christophe Dubi, the IOC's sports director was asked about future expansion. He mentioned snowshoe racing and bandy as "long shots." But then there was this sentence (quoting from the article), "Dubi said he also found ski mountaineering intriguing in the long term, because it is growing, especially in Europe." I wonder if he actually said ski orienteering, and the reporter got it wrong.

Just so everyone is clear, team luge, team figure skating, and team biathlon are not new sports, but rather new disciplines of existing sports: luge, figure skating, and biathlon.

The summer games are essentially full with sports (if 1 is added, 1 needs to be removed), but new disciplines are added pretty regularly.

Competitive ski mountaineering is also a thing.

is this a Skiogain (Rogaine on Skis)

No he will of meant Ski Mountaineering see http://ismf-ski.org/ There is a world cup series and yearly world champs and a thriving race seen in the Alps at least. It's what the Alpine guides do to get there kicks. Skin up a mountain as fast as possible then throw yourself down again on the other side. A fairly pure form of sport really no judges involved. There is a good bit of cross over with Mountain and Ultra running with Kilian Jornet being the dominate man in both.

My brother was racing a regularly a couple of years back while working in the Alps.

There's more potential for getting new events/sports into the Winter Olympics than the summer ones because there is still space in the program - the Winter Olympics go for two weeks because that's how long it takes to play an ice hockey tournament, but there isn't really enough other stuff to fill two weeks. This is part of the reason why IOF is pushing for ski orienteering to get in. (Getting in would be financially lucrative as well - even half the distribution that curling, the smallest existing Winter Olympic sport, gets would triple the IOF's income).