Olympic Update: Snow Sculpting to Become Olympic Sport

Posted by Cynical Sarah on February 9, 2006

After seeing some of the snow and ice sculptures created for the Olympic Games in Italy, the International Olympic Committee plans to add snow sculpture as a sport for the 2010 games.

“We saw some of the amazing art that was created and how much work goes into something so temporary,” said IOC member Janof Smirnoff. “We’d like to see these people gain more recognition for what is truly another winter wonder just like our Olympians.”

The event rules are still being determined. They have some basics for the competition set, but still need to flesh out the full rules and regulations for it.

So far they know that all the artists competing will be working on the same theme for their sculpture. They’ll know the theme a month in advance so they have time to come up with a design and plan on how they’ll do it. The event will be timed and judged on artistic interpretation of the theme.

“We understand that this is more of an artistic sport. Artistic interpretation plays a factor in other Olympic sports also though,” Smirnoff said. “Plus there is a big physical element to it since it’s intensive work to create a sculpture and they’ll have to complete it in a certain amount of time.”

For sculptors this is a chance to get their names out there in the art world. The athletes competing in other events however seem a little apprehensive about the new addition to the games.

“It seems like the IOC is getting a little desperate when it comes to adding events,” said Bode Miller, U.S. skier. “They added a whole bunch of new ones this year and it seems like adding more already for the next games might be just an attempt to get more media coverage.”

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