President Thomas Bach chaired the virtual meeting from Olympic House in Lausanne.

It was in the same city a century ago that plans were made to stage winter sports under an Olympic umbrella for the first time.

The Olympics did not take place in 1921, but it was a year that IOC President Baron Pierre de Coubertin saw as a critical one for the Olympic Movement.

"First and foremost was the problem of the Winter Games", he reflected later.

Winter sport was growing in popularity. Skating had been included in a list of "desirable" sports at the very beginning of the modern Olympic Movement in 1894.

In Scandinavia, cross-country skiing or "Langlauf" was particularly popular both as a sport and as a way of travelling in deep snow.

In 1901 the first "Nordiska Spel" or Nordic Games were held in Stockholm. The Scandinavians regarded them with an almost proprietorial air.

Of the Winter Olympics, de Coubertin went so far as to suggest that they "did not want them at any price."

Even so, ice skating was included on the Olympic programme at the 1908 Olympics in London.

The official report of the Games records that "an excellent and representative entry was received."

The competitions, held in October at the Prince’s Skating rink in the fashionable London district of Knightsbridge were "perhaps the most strenuous, delightful and varied display of figure skating that has ever taken place."

Amongst the champions was Sweden’s Ulrich Salchow, the dominant skater of his era who gave his name to a signature jump.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, the Swedes were not as enthusiastic about including winter sports when Stockholm became an Olympic host city.

"In 1912, Stockholm eagerly seized on the argument that it had no suitable premises, in order to rid itself of the burden of organising this event," de Coubertin complained.

Berlin was chosen as host city for the 1916 Games. Detailed plans were made and these reveal that organisers intended to include skating and a skiing festival in the Black Forest. 

Ultimately the Games did not take place because of the First World War.

When peace returned, the 1920 Games were held in the Belgian city of Antwerp.

The first Olympic gold medals to be decided were in figure skating and ice hockey.

In conjunction with the 1921 IOC Session, a series of conferences were arranged.

These included a gathering for winter sports representatives.

A report on their deliberations was delivered by Alfred Megroz, a Swiss figure skater who had finished eighth in the men’s singles in Antwerp and also been a judge in the pairs competitions.

By now, the chic winter resorts of France and Switzerland were becoming an increasingly fashionable destination for the glitterati in the roaring twenties.

"In the last twenty-five years, winter sports had not only developed in a number of other countries but they were so truly amateur, so frank and so pure in their sporting dignity that their complete exclusion from the Olympic programme deprived it of much force and value," De Coubertin observed.

The discussions which took place in Lausanne revealed a difference of opinion between the representatives of Switzerland, France and Canada and the Scandinavians. The Norwegian delegates had agreed in advance to speak on behalf of the Swedes.

When the IOC Session convened, De Coubertin persuaded the IOC to accept Paris as the host city for the 1924 Olympics.

Two French IOC members, the Comte Justinien de Clary and the Marquis de Polignac came forward to inform the session of  "the desire of France to organise a winter sports week and to see this event connected in some way with the Olympic Games."

The IOC expressed concerns that "it was obviously contrary to the essential regulations of the Games to introduce competitions which could not be held in the same place and at the same time."

Eventually, after lengthy discussions, the IOC decided to support an event to be held in the resort of Chamonix in early 1924. It would be held "on the occasion of the Olympics but not be an integral part."

James Merrick, the newly co-opted IOC member for Canada had also spoken in the debate, a reflection if it were needed that the popularity of winter sports extended beyond the extreme north of Europe.

De Coubertin noted that by now it had dawned on the Scandinavians that "in view of the roles of Switzerland and Canada in particular they could no longer lay claim to the practical monopoly they had exercised for so long."

There was also a Congress on mountaineering at which the delegates agreed that there would be a prize for "alpinism." This was to be given to the best climb in the four years of the Olympiad.

To recognise a growing demand for influence from what would in modern jargon be referred to as "stakeholders" there was a meeting of international Federations.

These included representatives from skating and ice hockey. They drew up regulations for what was described as a "permanent bureau for International Sporting Federations."

The prize for alpinism proved short lived and survived only until the Second World War but the winter sports week held in Chamonix proved to have more lasting success.

Figure skating, speed skating, ice hockey and curling were all held outdoors along with bobsleigh, cross-country skiing, jumping, nordic combined and an event called the military ski patrol, similar to the biathlon.

In the official report, organising secretary Frantz Reichel described the event as the Winter "Games" of Chamonix. a Freudian slip perhaps. The Games, held under the "high patronage" of the IOC certainly included the trappings of an Olympic event. Camille Mandrillon, a biathlete who carried the French flag also took a competitors oath with the same wording and an Olympic flag flew.

As they came to a close, De Coubertin paid tribute to the organisers.

"I think many of us would not rest easy if I failed to take this opportunity to express the admiration and gratitude that the efforts made to assure the greatest degree of technical perfection at this first Olympic tournament of winter sports inspire in us," he began.

"Winter sports are amongst the purest and that is why I was so eager to see them take their place in a definitive way amongst Olympic events."

Taking their cue from the President, the IOC soon decided that there was to be "a distinct cycle" for Winter Games.

The events of Chamonix 1924 were regarded as the first of the series.

They were to be subject to all the regulations of Olympic protocol and would be allocated wherever practical to the country which hosted the Olympics. In fact this was a convention which has not been enforced since 1936, when Germany hosted the Winter Olympics in Garmisch Partenkirchen, a few months before the XI Olympiad in Berlin in 1936.

Since then, the Games have grown to a size that would make such an arrangement almost impossible. From 1994 winter and summer Games have taken place in separate years.