Colorado has never hosted the Winter Olympics. Climate change could improve its chances
DENVER — This February marks 50 years since Denver was supposed to be the host city for the 1976 Winter Olympics. Of course, that never happened. The Games took place in Innsbruck, Austria, instead.
In the 1972 election, Coloradans voted overwhelmingly against the use of public dollars for the Olympics, which the International Olympic Committee had awarded to Denver two years prior. The voters’ decision effectively ended Colorado’s hosting plans, making Denver the only city to ever back out of hosting the Olympics.
“It's something I will never recover from,” Willy Schaeffler, the legendary University of Denver ski coach, told The Rocky Mountain News after the vote. “The people of Colorado are not aware of what they did — not only to themselves but to the entire country and to the whole Olympics program.”
By the 1980s, Colorado leaders were asking for another shot, with their eyes set on the 1998 Games. Even Dick Lamm, who led the anti-Olympics efforts in 1972 before becoming governor of Colorado, changed his tune. “We have learned we can't take economic growth for granted,” he told The New York Times in 1989.
International ski officials were not as quick to move on from the “awkward” anti-Olympics vote, George Gillett, the former owner of Vail and Beaver Creek, said in 1989. Since then, Coloradans haven’t made the bid process easier. Denver voters approved a 2019 ballot initiative that requires an additional vote before city officials can spend money — or even staff time — to lure the Olympics to Colorado.
But despite the state’s anti-Olympics history and legislative impediments, there is one thing that might help Colorado’s odds of hosting the Games in the future: climate change.
More than half of the Winter Olympics — beginning with the 1924 inaugural Games in Chamonix, France — have taken place in Europe. But a 2024 study commissioned by the IOC from researchers in Austria and Canada found that more than 20 possible European host cities will be “unreliable” from a climate standpoint by 2050. That number of reliable cities shrinks even more by 2080.
However, the researchers, Robert Steiger and Daniel Scott, found that Colorado is likely to remain “climate reliable” through 2080 (this year’s dismal snowpack notwithstanding).
“Western Europe is projected to experience the biggest changes,” Steiger and Scott wrote. “The number of climate reliable locations in North America remains relatively stable in the low and medium emission scenario until the 2050s.”
In order to be “climate reliable” a venue must reach the daily freezing temperatures needed to produce blown snow, which must then freeze overnight to “ensure fair and safe conditions for athletes,” the researchers wrote.
Steiger and Scott identified just five places in the U.S. that are expected to produce the conditions required to host the Games; two are in Colorado:
- Beaver Creek (Colorado)
- Aspen (Colorado)
- Snowbasin (Utah)
- Soldier Hollow (Utah)
- Cannon Mountain (New Hampshire)
In the future, Utah might be the favored North American site to host the Games because of precedent, said Michael Childers, a professor at Colorado State University. Childers’ book, “Colorado Powder Keg,” chronicles the parallel rise of the ski industry and the environmental movement.
The 2002 Games took place in and around Salt Lake City, Childers pointed out, and “they already have the facilities, the airport, the luge runs, the ski areas ... all these sort of things. So does it make more economic sense to continue just to use those facilities?”
Since Colorado spurned the Olympics in the 70s, an American city has hosted only twice: Lake Placid, New York, in 1980 and Salt Lake City in 2002 (after a bribery scandal).
Still, Childers is optimistic about Colorado’s odds moving forward.
“Skiing has become more and more concentrated into the middle part of the continent as the climate has changed, because we have the most consistent snow. So most likely, we [Colorado] will be a venue simply because places like Lake Placid cannot sustain enough snow,” he said. “I think that we're well situated.”
Rob Cohen is less confident. Cohen is the CEO of IMA Financial Group and the founder of the Denver Sports Commission, where he led multiple bids to bring the Winter Games to Colorado. He described the state’s chances of hosting as “slim to none,” but not because of climate and snowpack. The real barrier, Cohen said, is the 2019 ballot initiative that prevents city officials from even working on an Olympics bid without first holding a vote. The legislation makes it “almost impossible” to host the Games, he said.
“I still believe this is the greatest winter sports area in the world that's yet to host an Olympic Games,” Cohen said of Colorado. “And so I'll never say never. But I would say, because of our history, because of this proposition… it would be a major uphill battle for anybody to take on. But I knew that when we got involved, and I was willing to do that because I thought in the end it would be an incredible thing for our community. And I still do believe that to this day.”
Steiger and Scott released a follow-up study in January of this year that examined ways to make the Games more climate resilient.
“The tenability and success of future Winter Games will depend on whether the international community achieves the temperature goals of the Paris Climate Agreement,” they concluded. The goal of the international agreement is to keep the rise in global surface temperature below 2 degrees Celsius. President Donald Trump officially withdrew the United States from the Paris agreement last month — for the second time. Research shows international climate agreements are slowing climate change, just not quickly enough.
Steiger and Scott also suggested changes to the Paralympics schedule that would make more locations climate reliable. Under the “one bid, one city” system that has been in place since 2001, Winter Olympics host cities must also host the Winter Paralympic Games the following month. The Winter Olympics usually take place in February, meaning the Paralympics happen in March. But according to Steiger and Scott’s research, the number of locations that will stay cold enough for the Paralympic Games in March is expected to plummet in the future.
“It becomes evident that unrestrained emissions would severely challenge the Paralympic Winter Games by the end of the century if it was continued to be scheduled in March,” Steiger and Scott wrote in their 2024 study.
The pair of researchers suggested a few alternatives, including shifting both the Winter Olympics and Paralympics earlier so that the latter concludes in February, or running the Games concurrently so that the Paralympics don’t have to wait until March.
Even if the warming climate eliminates some host city competition, Coloradans eager to welcome the Olympics to the Rocky Mountains will have to be patient. Europe still offers the greatest number of climate-reliable host locations, according to Steiger and Scott. Plus, the 2030 and 2034 games are already booked — the French Alps and Utah, respectively — and Switzerland is looking like the favorite for the 2038 Games.
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