World Athletics chief Lord Sebastian Coe has launched an unexpected proposal: moving handball to the Winter Olympics.
Coe, who is one of seven candidates vying to succeed Thomas Bach as president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), presented the idea in an interview with the BBC.
If Coe is elected in March next year, significant changes could be on the horizon for the Olympic movement. He sees climate change as a decisive factor in reshaping the global event calendar and suggests that some summer sports, especially those held indoors, could be moved to the Winter Games. Handball is one of the sports that could be affected.
– Climate change is going to fundamentally make us have to think about the global calendar, where we take our events and the times of the year that we take our events. And some people have even suggested that we might want to look at the balance between the winter and summer Games, says Coe to BBC.
– You have venues where some sports are indoors. You could in theory take them into another time of the year, maybe a winter Games.
Handball has been part of the Olympic program since Munich 1972, but the packed championship schedule has long been a point of criticism from players, particularly during Olympic years when the calendar becomes especially tight.