IOC's Dubi encourages non-traditional countries to play winter sports

Source: Xinhua| 2018-02-24 18:00:19|Editor: pengying

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PYEONGCHANG, Feb. 24 (Xinhua) -- Christophe Dubi, the Olympic Games executive director for the IOC, said on Saturday that the right strategy to promote the Winter Olympic Games is to help people understand and participate in winter sports.

Dubi told Xinhua that IOC uses a multipronged approach to promote the Winter Olympic Games. "First it is to award the Games to nations that are non-traditional in winter sports," said Dubi.

"We had the Winter Games in Sapporo in 1972, Nagano in 1988, and now in PyeongChang 2018 and Beijing 2022. Awarding the Games to these new horizons lets people understand and participate in the winter sports."

"One great strength of Beijing's bid for 2022 is the promise of getting 300 million people interested in winter sports. When you add 300 million people to the pool of sports fans, it grows naturally," he explained.

The second and third aspects of the strategy, according to Dubi, are to add more urban and youth oriented sports to maintain relevance, and to create opportunities within sports.

"We are seeing new countries joining in. By creating favorable conditions for the participation of countries such as Nigeria, Brazil and other non-traditional winter sports countries, we create the opportunity for people from these territories to follow up. That leads to inspiration. We want to see their national athletes inspire their youth to participate in either winter or summer sports."

With regards to barriers to winter sports, such as cost, Dubi said that sports present different complexities. For example, ice rinks with new synthetic materials and ski on carpet for casual practice are not necessarily expensive.

"The international federations and sports industry know the price point, and the whole industry is looking into means to reduce costs and increase participation," he said.

"If we want to grow the winter sports and participation, the price point will have to come down. And this is what the IOC has been working towards on the back of the measures of the Olympic Agenda 2020 and the new norm, a set of reforms that facilitate the organization of the Olympic Games."