IS CYCLOCROSS IN THE WINTER OLYMPICS?
And could Olympic mountain bike champion Tom Pidcock win another Olympic gold medal this month?
If cyclocross ever does get in the Winter Olympics, the multi-talented Tom Pidcock (shown here winning a recent World Cup cyclocross race) will likely be one of the favorites. Photo by Twila Federica Muzzi/Red Bull Content Pool.
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After Olympic mountain bike gold medalist Tom Pidcock won the Cyclocross World Championship last month, we wondered if Pidcock and cyclocross would be in the Winter Olympics this month. Cyclocross is traditionally a winter sport that has been used as an off-season training tool by both mountain and road bike racers for years. In fact, many of the top mountain bikers in the world, American riders included, have won nearly as many cyclocross titles as they have mountain bike titles.
We hadn’t heard anything about cyclocross being scheduled to be in the Winter Olympics yet, but that doesn’t mean much right now. There are so many things happening in the news these days that it’s hard to stay on top of everything.
So, we went online to ask Google if cyclocross was going to be in the Winter Olympics this year. The answer is “No.”
Cyclocross doesn’t qualify as a Winter Olympic sport because sports have to be held on ice or snow to be in the Winter Olympics. Since cyclocross doesn’t have to be held on ice or snow, it has never been included in the Winter Olympics.
There has been some speculation about whether the people at the International Olympic Committee might move to make a rules change about the ice or snow requirement in order to put cyclocross racing into the Winter Olympics, but that hasn’t happened so far. Those kinds of decisions are apparently based on how much they think the decision would boost viewership of the Games, and since cyclocross is not a huge sport, it looks like it’s unlikely to happen in the near future.
For the time being, it looks like cyclocross will continue to be a sport that is mostly held in the winter months and occasionally held in snow, but since it can be held on dirt, too, and doesn’t have to be held on snow, it looks like cyclocross won’t be getting into the Winter Olympics anytime soon.
