If you’ve watched even a little bit of the 2026 Winter Olympics, you probably are aware how much hay has been made of the spread-out nature of these Games. Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, its two host cities, are about five hours apart by car. Both cities are a multiple-hours drive away from Livigno, where freestyle skiing and snowboarding are being contested.
This is indicative of the International Olympic Committee’s new, regional approach to the Winter Olympics—both a gesture in the direction of fiscal responsibility and a nod to the increasingly tricky nature of 21st-century winters. The 2030 and 2034 Olympics in the French Alps and Utah will both be regional affairs. The 2038 Games—being floated to Switzerland—may be as well.
The forthcoming ‘34 Games will presumably take the United States out of the Winter Olympic bidding for the immediate future, but the regionalization of the Games invites an interesting thought exercise.
How many cities in the United States could actually—credibly—host the Winter Olympics right now?
To answer this, we’ll examine the question sport by sport (excluding ski mountaineering due to its associate status within the Winter Olympic sports federations). If a media market can credibly host a sport, we’ll give it a point. At the end of the piece, we’ll tally up each market’s points. Then, we’ll see if we can fuse certain media markets together—like Denver and Colorado Springs, for instance—to create a more overarching event. Then, we’ll have our list.
Let the speculation begin.
Sliding sports (bobsled, luge and skeleton)
By leaps and bounds, bobsled, luge and skeleton are the hardest Winter Olympic sports to pull off due to the sheer scarcity of their tracks. There are only 17 in the entire world, two of which are in the United States—the Mount Van Hoevenberg Olympic Bobsled Run in Lake Placid, N.Y., and the Utah Olympic Park Track in Park City. Burlington, Vt.-Plattsburgh, N.Y., and Salt Lake City receive three points each.
Biathlon
Biathlon is the only ski discipline with its own federation, the International Biathlon Union. In order to qualify for this list, we’ll say you have to have hosted a world championship or World Cup race in the last 20 years (2007 to ‘26). Presque Isle, Maine, and Salt Lake City receive one point each.
Nordic skiing
Consists of three sports—cross-country skiing, Nordic combined, and ski jumping. Here, we’ll follow the same rules as we did for the biathlon, except each sport will be worth one point. Burlington, Vt.-Plattsburgh, N.Y., receives two points. Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn., receives one point.
Freestyle skiing and snowboarding
Same rules apply here—as tempting as it is to use the X Games as a barometer. Each sport is worth one point. Atlanta, Boston, Mass.-Manchester, N.H., Burlington, Vt.-Plattsburgh, N.Y., Denver, Reno, Nev., Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto, Calif., and Salt Lake City receive two points each. Portland-Auburn, Maine, and Portland, Ore., receive one point each.
Alpine skiing
Still widely regarded as the Olympic crown jewel. You know the drill by now. Burlington, Vt.-Plattsburgh, N.Y., Denver, Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto, Calif., and Twin Falls, Idaho, receive one point each.
Speedskating and short-track speedskating
The most restrictive of the four skating sports, with the former in particular demanding very specific ice dimensions—dimensions that Marquette, Mich., may not be able to provide after a renovation to Northern Michigan’s arena. Still, we’ll include it on the list in the interest of completism. Salt Lake City receives two points. Marquette, Mich., and Milwaukee receive one point each.
Curling
Always a cult hit at the Olympics, curling is the first of three sports that can plausibly be played in multi-use arenas—i.e. NHL arenas. However, we will give a bonus point to American cities that have played host to world championship curling in the last 20 years. Fargo-Valley City, N.D., Las Vegas, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn., and Salt Lake City receive one point each.
Figure skating
A huge draw both in person and on television, figure skating requires a massive, NHL-caliber arena. As with curling, a bonus point to places that have provided that at the world championship level. Boston, Mass.-Manchester, N.H. and Los Angeles receive one point each.
Ice hockey
The easiest venues to find in the United States of any winter sport. Bonus points to three recent hosts of the women’s world; there hasn’t been a men’s world championship in America since 1962. Burlington, Vt.-Plattsburgh, N.Y., Detroit and Utica, N.Y., receive one point each.
Total points
9: Burlington, Vt.-Plattsburgh, N.Y.. and Salt Lake City
3: Boston, Mass.-Manchester, N.H., Denver, and Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto, Calif.
2: Atlanta, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn., and Reno, Nev.
1: Detroit, Fargo-Valley City, N.D., Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Marquette, Mich., Milwaukee, Portland, Ore., Portland-Auburn, Maine, Presque Isle, Maine, Twin Falls, Idaho, Utica, N.Y.
So—how many U.S. cities could plausibly host the Winter Olympics?
Remember the Friends episode where Chandler meets with a career counselor, only to find out that the job he’s best suited for is the one he’s already doing?
Surprise, surprise—the cities in the United States best suited to host the Winter Olympics are cities that have already hosted it. These cities make up three of the seven (7) media markets in the United States that could plausibly serve as Winter Olympic hubs. They are as follows.
Burlington, Vt.-Plattsburgh, N.Y. (Lake Placid)
This is Lake Placid, N.Y., the proud home of the 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympics. Virtually all necessary infrastructure is still in the area, whether in New Hampshire, New York or Vermont. What isn’t there can realistically be fashioned. The question is whether Boston (five hours away by car), New York (ditto), or even nearby Montreal would want into the mix.
Salt Lake City
Self-explanatory, given the forthcoming 2034 Winter Olympics in the Beehive State.
Boston, Mass.-Manchester, N.H. (New England)
If the United States is looking for a more urban Winter Olympics, here’s the way to do it. Gillette Stadium or even (gasp!) Fenway Park could serve as the Olympic Stadium. Hockey, curling and figure skating could take over TD Garden and the city’s glut of college venues. Lake Placid, N.Y., could contribute sliding sports and speedskating. Even Maine, the home of a world-class biathlon center, could come into play.
Denver
If the Centennial State is willing to swallow its pride and kick sliding sports and speedskating over to Utah—and we don’t get a repeat of 1976, when Denver voters defeated the Olympics in a referendum—here is a city tailor-made for the Games. Legendary ski resort Aspen, Colo.—once and still the province of plutocracy—has acquired a more populist image from the X Games, and here’s a chance to show it off. A new stadium for ceremonies is on the horizon as well.
Reno, Nev. and/or Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto, Calif. (Lake Tahoe)
It makes no sense to keep these two markets separate, given their proximity (Reno and Sacramento are a two-hour drive apart). Reno is building a hockey arena as we speak, and both cities have decent-sized ceremony stadiums (Hornet Stadium in Sacramento, Mackay Stadium in Reno). The area has had the Winter Games before, in 1960. However, the expense of building a track ensured that sliding sports were not staged in those Olympics—Salt Lake City to the rescue?
Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn. (American Midwest)
A geographic problem of the American winter sports project is that many of the country’s coldest and snowiest places—i.e., the Upper Midwest states—are also flat. A pan-Midwestern Winter Olympics could mitigate this. Arena sports orbit the Twin Cities. Speedskating goes east to Milwaukee, and sliding sports (you guessed it) to Lake Placid, N.Y. The tricky part is skiing, where the Duluth, Minn., area and Michigan’s remote Upper Peninsula may have to enter the picture.
More Winter Olympics on Sports Illustrated
- NBC President Responds to Concerns Over Pressure Network Places on Olympic Athletes
- Bend but Don’t Break: Team USA’s Identity Takes Shape in Gritty Quarterfinal Win
- Breezy Johnson Quiets Trolls Regarding Her Engagement at Olympics
- Czechia Coach Rips Olympic Refs Despite Viral Photo of Six Players on Ice vs. Canada
This article was originally published on www.si.com as How Many U.S. Cities Could Actually Host the Winter Olympics?.
