On Fri, 5 Mar 2004, Terje Mathisen wrote:

The book also makes the claim that the 1949 Olympic Conference in Rome
gave Ski-O "Olympic Status"!

This just means that there's national federations for Ski-O in enough
countries to qualify for the winter olympics. This limit is
significantly lower than the one required for a summer sport.

Plus it's not just a simple matter of meeting a qualifying standard.
It's all very much politics. At one point we were being told that
the summer games were "full". If any new sport wished to be included
in the summer games they had to not only meet whatever current
qualifying standard was in place at the time, they also had to propose
which currently included sport should be kicked out. Now, who wants
to play that game? (!)

Meanwhile the story was that the winter games were not "full" and
therefore there was room yet to add more sports. One of the primary
problems with getting ski-O added has been the difficulty of showing it
on TV. Oh, that and the fact that the vast majority of Americans has
no idea what it is. (Even the ones who think they do know.)

Another problem has been that there would be scheduling congestion
trying to get at whatever x-c ski trails are available. There's
already cross country, biathlon, and nordic combined vying for trail
time.

-Mitch