In 2024, 10,500 athletes competed in the Paris Summer Olympics. This year, around 2,900 athletes are competing in the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics. The difference in athletes is staggering, but it’s not shocking when you consider the cost and accessibility of winter sports. These sports are less affordable and also less accessible to people of color than summer sports, and athletes and federations need to provide access for minority communities.
Looking at Team USA specifically, one can’t help but notice it is overwhelmingly white, because the sports are not accessible to people of color. If a kid wants to learn a winter sport from an early age and develop the skills to compete, they have to find the facilities and coaches themselves. Those facilities are few and far between for many people. A kid in New Mexico does not have the same access to snowy mountains as a kid in Colorado.
Examples are winter sports such as skiing and snowboarding. To train in sports like halfpipe or snowboarding, one must have regular access to snow facilities or even just a ski resort. In 2024, the National Ski Areas Association said about 1% of people who attended ski resorts identified as Black. This is because of where the ski resorts are and the overall cost of even trying to start skiing.
Ski resorts are very exclusive because of the cost. The cost to buy a pair of skis can range between $400-$1,000, and snowboards can cost $200 and over $1,500. Those prices are just for the board itself, not including a jacket or helmet, and not to mention how much you have to pay a coach or how much it costs to use training facilities. That is just to start; once someone starts to take it more seriously, the cost can go up significantly.
Winter sports are not like summer sports, such as track or soccer; you can’t just make a bobsled track in a park. This leaves a lot of lower-income communities out before one can fully realize their love and passion for a winter sport.
When a sport is only accessible because of wealth, diversity suffers, which also leads to fewer children of color wanting to try winter sports.
Visibility is important; when someone sees an athlete who looks like them succeed in a sport, they want to try the sport and mimic the success of the athlete. Children of color have very few athletes to look up to when it comes to the Winter Olympics because of the large lack of diversity.
It’s also hard to spread the visibility of athletes competing in winter sports when these sports aren’t easy to watch. Snowboarding, figure skating and speed skating are not popular sports, and thus are not well-advertised to people. When comparing the viewership for the U.S. Figure Skating Championship and a regular-season NFL game, the numbers are laughable. This year, the figure skating championship had around 2 million viewers throughout the weekend, the most-watched championship since 2019. This NFL season, the league had an average viewership of 18.7 million per game.
Part of the reason that figure skating is viewed less is that the programs are locked behind Peacock's Premium subscription. If one cannot see the sport to begin with, there is no way to spread the diversity within it.
This year's Olympic team is one of the most diverse Olympic teams that the USA team has had in years. Athletes like Laila Edwards, the first Black woman named to the Olympic women's hockey roster, and Erin Jackson, the first Black woman to win an individual gold medal, are going to be role models for years to come for young Black girls.
Some programs are trying to diversify the Winter Olympics, created by athletes and committees to help promote diversity within winter sports, like the Elladj Baldé scholarship to help children of color pursue figure skating in Canada, or the National Brotherhood of Snowsports, who help provide funding for coaching and other expenses when it comes to skiing or snowboarding. However, more must be done to make them fully accessible for minority communities across the world.
Cassie is a senior studying communications at Ohio University. Please note the views expressed in this column do not reflect those of The Post. Want to talk to Cassie? Email her at cb086021@ohio.edu.
