What should future Winter Paralympics look like? Bigger, better and maybe earlier

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CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — The question, “What should future Winter Paralympics look like?” is simple enough. The answers are multiple and complex.

The 2026 Milan Cortina Games involved a record number of participating athletes and countries. It was the fourth straight Games to set a new mark for most female competitors, and this was the first Winter Paralympics hosted across multiple cities. Twenty-seven nations medalled, breaking a record from 1994.

The International Paralympic Committee (IPC) promised “the most beautiful Paralympic Winter Games ever.” They feel that they have delivered.

The United States versus Italy in the round robin had the highest attendance (8,992) to date for a para ice hockey match, bettering the gold-medal game from the 2002 Salt Lake City Paralympics. This record was broken again in Milan, as 10,755 attended the final between the U.S. and Canada.

Viewership, the IPC said, reached unprecedented levels within just a few days. These Games had more views on YouTube than the 2024 Summer Paralympics.

Mixed doubles debuted in curling. The reduced format, faster-paced event ran at the start of the Paralympics and produced ideal jeopardy. Five of the eight teams were still in contention for the playoffs before the final match of the round robin (China had already qualified).

“Honestly, win or lose, this still would have been the most fun I’ve ever had in a curling match,” said American Steve Emt in the mixed zone. “This is the way every curling match should be.” Athletes have valued competing at the same venues as the Olympians, as they did in curling.

All of this is good. Things can and should improve for the 2030 Games in the French Alps and the 2034 Salt Lake City Winter Paralympics. Growing the programme is paramount.

Para bobsled was rejected from Milan Cortina because it “fell short of the minimum criteria,” IPC president Andrew Parsons announced in 2021.

That criteria demands participation from at least 12 nations across three regions (continents) in a four-season period. Para bobsled was two countries short.

“I know this will be understandably disappointing news to the para bobsleigh community,” Parsons added. “However, the sport should be encouraged that if it can maintain the participation levels it had during the 2019-20 season — 16 nations — it will be in a strong position for 2030.”

The IPC board sets those criteria. Five of the 10 members are former Paralympians. A president, two vice presidents and seven members-at-large make up the board, which is elected every four years and meets three times a season.

Para snowboard once faced these same challenges. The event was rejected from the 2010 Vancouver Games but included in 2014 — first as part of Alpine skiing, and then as its own event from 2018.

The IPC must manage the trade-off between increasing the number of events while maintaining elite standards. Snowboarding is the only sport that has been added since 2006, and the past four Paralympics have plateaued in the number of medal events, with 72, 80, 78 and 79, respectively, from 2014 to 2026. In that time, the Winter Olympics have grown from 98 to 116 medal events.

Sled hockey, part of the programme since 1994, is the leading contender for a new discipline. At the Winter Paralympics, this is a mixed event, but men dominate. Japanese athlete Akari Fukunishi became just the fourth woman to compete in the event’s history when she played at these Games.

“It means a lot,” she said. “It will obviously be difficult because of the physicality. I need to think about how to adapt to the team as a female player.”

For a women’s sled hockey event to feature in 2030, certain boxes need to be checked.

World Para Ice Hockey must replicate its 2025 world championship on a bigger stage. That was the governing body’s inaugural global tournament, hosted in Dolný Kubín, Slovakia, last August.

Michelle Laflamme, World Para Ice Hockey’s senior manager, told The Athletic that “we had tremendous success. It was basically a full crowd for every game.”

She and other staff are cautiously optimistic. They had “heartbreak” in 2022 when they launched their first tournaments, discovering they were too late for the 2026 Paralympics. “The road is much harder than a lot of people think it is,” Laflamme said.

“We need to have a second world championship, with eight countries and three regions represented (because it is a team sport),” she added. “That’s already done (three regions), but we’re still short three teams.”

Australia, Canada, the United States, Norway and Great Britain participated in Slovakia, with an international side (called Team World, which would not be eligible for a Winter Games) making up a six-team tournament.

“A positive was that the IPC president and CEO came,” she said. “They met the athletes, heard their stories, saw the talent.”

Laflamme named India and Kazakhstan as countries that are making progress in para ice hockey. Japan, the Netherlands and Mexico all have athletes, too.

“Because it is a new format, countries can progress quite rapidly,” she said. The difficulty is what Laflamme calls a “chicken and egg” situation. “If the IPC today said, ‘We’re putting it in the Paralympics,’ then a lot of countries would start their programmes. We have to repeatedly explain to members that we will not be in the Games if we don’t have the programmes.”

The IPC said it is “always working with federations to see how we can grow the Winter Games.” The organization also has a series of “guiding principles,” which are less objective but still important for deciding an event’s inclusion. For example, the discipline needs to be accessible enough for athletes with various impairments, open to men and women worldwide, and with sufficient competitive strength and depth.

Schedules are another issue. The next two Winter Paralympics are set to take place over 10 days: March 1 through March 10 (French Alps, 2030) and March 10 to March 19 (Salt Lake City, 2034).

“Long term, we really have to be aware of the impact of climate change,” IPC chief of brand and communications Craig Spence said at a media briefing in Cortina. “We’re not going to ignore that.”

Inclement weather repeatedly disrupted ski and snowboard events in Cortina. The third downhill training session was cancelled, and the snowboard banked finals were moved up from Saturday to Friday for better conditions. In the men’s giant slalom final, 18 of the 37 sit skiers did not finish on deteriorating snow.

“The conditions were so, so variable,” Great Britain’s visually impaired skier Fred Warburton said after the second run. “One gate, absolutely rock solid, the salt had set in. The next gate was like a bathtub of Slush Puppie.”

Multiple athletes have expressed a desire for the Games to begin earlier, potentially staging them before the Olympics — not just for improved conditions but also for better recognition and to make the competition seem like less of an afterthought. Some athletes support the more ambitious goal of intertwining the two Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games.

“Changing the calendar is easier said than done, because if we were to move forward Olympic events, then the Paralympics would follow, but the weeks prior are when the international federations are involved,” Spence said in a media briefing last week.

“We need to take into account the wishes of the IOC, IPC, the winter sport federations, the media rights holders — because some major sporting events are coming to a climax during this moment.”

Then there is the contentious point of Russia and Belarus’ return to these Games after a 12-year ban. IPC members voted to lift the suspension in September 2025, a decision that the IPC repeatedly stressed was diplomatic in nature.

After the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled in December that skiers from the two nations should be allowed to participate in qualifying events, Russia secured six and Belarus four “bipartite” spots for high-ranking athletes. Russian athletes won 12 medals, including eight golds, at the Games, finishing third on the medal table.

The IPC’s efforts to depoliticise itself and the Games are set to continue. This will likely mean fewer bans on countries and more reprimanding of athletes who “protest” in a “political” fashion, as the IPC views it.

Bigger, better and probably earlier ought to be the IPC’s goals for future Winter Paralympics.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

Olympics, Global Sports, Women's Olympics

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