6th International Ski Congress: 10th February 1922 – Stockholm (SWE)

20 delegates from 6 countries

The countries of Central Europe are unable to attend following a rail strike in Germany. No decision is taken in regard to the introduction of skiing on the Olympic programme as the IOC is not yet ready to give full recognition to skiing competitions which the Games’ organisers could however plan for, without awarding Olympic medals.
In his “Olympic Memoirs,” Pierre de Coubertin recalls the difficult creation of the Winter Games, when speaking of the IOC Congress of 1921.

“The Scandinavians did not want them at any price,” he writes “But,” he adds, in twenty-five years, winter sports had not only developed in a number of countries but they were so truly amateur, so frank and so pure in their sporting dignity that their complete exclusion from the Olympic programme deprived it of much force and value. On the other hand, how were they to be organised? In addition to the Scandinavian resistance, there was the twofold concern that they could not take place at the same time or in the same place as the Summer Games.

It was therefore bruited abroad that if France were selected as the host country for the Games of the Vlll. Olympiad, the organisers would have the right to present at Chamonix a week of winter sports to which the IOC would give its patronage but which “would not be part of the Games”. This latter clause had to be annulled later and, confirms Coubertin, “the Winter Games were finally founded in spite of the Scandinavians who ended by abandoning their objection and realising that in view of the roles of Switzerland and Canada in particular they could no longer lay claim to the practical monopoly they had exercised for so long.