Athletes have been building towards the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics with this weekend, for example, seeing competitions in alpine, freestyle and Nordic skiing, as well as bobsleigh, luge, ski jumping and speed skating.

But this weekend, another event was also muscling in on the winter sport action, with the International Cycling Union (UCI) Cyclo-cross World Cup in Val di Sole held on snow for the first time.

Val di Sole has been a regular host of cycling events, but the latest competition was billed as a significant one as organisers seek to tout cyclo-cross' credentials as a possible Winter Olympic discipline. Racing was held at the Nordic ski centre in Vermiglio at an altitude of 1,261 metres, with Belgium’s Wout Van Aert and the Netherlands' Fem Van Empel emerging as the winners of the men’s and women’s races.

Tomas Van den Spiegel, chief executive of Flanders Classics, who manage the Cyclo-cross World Cup, expressed hope the event would enhance cyclocross’ Winter Olympic hopes. "There is an ongoing discussion at the International Olympic Committee (IOC) regarding the opportunity of bringing cyclo-cross to the Olympics, and this is very important, but we must not think as we have already gotten there," Van den Spiegel was quoted as saying.

"The Val di Sole event is an important test for us too: we have a goal clearly set in mind, but there is still a path we have to go through, to which having a great event this weekend is totally instrumental. The tradition that Italy has in this discipline also should not be overlooked, and that’s a country we want to have permanently in our calendar in the coming years, as well as we hope for a great future with Val di Sole.

"For a long time we had not had so much buzz around an event like we are having for the Trentino’s one, and we hope that Val di Sole can become a regular and important stage for the Cyclo-cross World Cup, as it happened in mountain biking."

The event was billed as having the potential to have a "significant impact" on the overall project, but former UCI President Brian Cookson signalled a note of caution about the idea on Twitter, highlighting that when the governing body proposed the idea to the IOC in 2014, the organisation responded by saying the Games were reserved for sports "in which snow or ice was a necessary element".

It may have been a coincidence that the Cyclo-cross World Cup’s maiden snow event took place in Italy, with the nation due to host the 2026 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games. If it was a deliberate attempt to enhance credentials for Milan Cortina 2026, I feel organisers will end up disappointed.

Cyclo-cross, similarly to cross-country in athletics, can certainly mount a claim for being a winter sport due to the months the disciplines take place in the sporting calendar. Yet traditional winter sports, if you remember, were unsurprisingly opposed to when World Athletics were keen to put cross-country forward for the Winter Olympics.

In 2017, the International Ski Federation said the Games should be for sports with "DNA on/with snow and ice", noting that cross-country and biathlon roller skiing or grass skiing would not be considered for the Summer Games programme under the same logic.

World Athletics appeared to have accepted its efforts would continue to hit a brick wall for the Winter Olympics, with sights turned instead towards the Summer Games.

The governing body had was disappointed when cross-country was rejected for Paris 2024 despite "detailed discussions" with the IOC last December, although optimism was given over the discipline’s potential for inclusion at Los Angeles 2028. 

One of the issues cited for Paris 2024 rejection was the alleged high costs of transforming an existing Olympic venue into a cross-country circuit. An argument could be made that Winter Olympic venues would be better suited to this.

The use of a Nordic skiing venue for the cyclo-cross event today was perhaps a clever nudge towards the IOC that the discipline could operate easily at a typical Games location.

A contrasting view, despite supporters of cross-country or cyclo-cross inclusion, would be that simply placing an event on snow or ice does not by definition make it a Winter Olympic sport. In a similar way to how several International Federations began holding events on sand when they discovered a World Beach Games was being launched in 2019.

The International Volleyball Federation are arguably the best example in this area, having successfully overseen the inclusion of beach volleyball onto the Olympic programme in 1992 alongside their traditional indoor format.

The governing body more recently opted for an ambitious effort to develop a snow volleyball circuit, with a World Tour launched in 2019. Their Olympic ambitions were touted with a demonstration event at the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics and a festival appearance in the Lausanne 2020 Winter Youth Olympics.

Despite traditional summer sports' ambitions to muscle in on the Winter Olympic programme, it seems unlikely the IOC’s position will change anytime soon. Should the dial have moved in recent years, I still expect we are many years away from a discipline like cyclo-cross featuring at the Winter Olympics.