By Zarif Rasul, AIPS Young Reporter - Cycling chief Brian Cookson [pictured left by Getty Images] has reiterated his desire to discuss the re-allocation of select Summer Olympic sports to the Winter Games, despite widespread criticism of his proposals.

Cookson, who last year replaced Pat McQuaid as president of the International Cycling Union (UCI), last month suggested that moving certain Summer Olympic sports such as cycling, judo and badminton to the Winter Games could be a viable method of easing congestion on the summer event.

International Judo Federation (IJF) president Marius Vizer, who is also president of SportAccord, laughed off Cookson’s proposals, while International Ski Federation (FIS) chief Gian-Franco Kasper described his ideas as “completely ridiculous”.

Cookson has apologised for the way in which he put forward his ideas but believes these suggestions should be investigated through International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach’s review of the Olympic programme.

He said: “I want to make it clear that my comments were very much blue-sky thinking off the top of my head. But if IOC president Thomas Bach wants a genuine debate and an open and honest one, then let’s put all of these ideas on the table. 

“When I look at the Olympic Games I see a huge imbalance between the Summer and the Winter Olympics – the number of events and competitors and so on.

“When I travel around the world I don’t find people in the cycling world saying to me ‘we want less cycling in the Olympics’. I find people saying ‘we want more events, we want to know how we can get our riders qualified because we can’t get even get enough competitors qualified for the Olympics’.

“So if part of that will be a restructuring of the Games to have a better balance between the Summer and the Winter Olympics, maybe that’s an idea worth talking about.

“I think it was probably slightly bad manners for me to mention a couple of sports without discussing it with them first – and I’m sorry about that – but these are ideas we are all in favour of having a frank, honest dialogue about, and that’s all I want to contribute.”

Sportscene is a member of the AIPS where this article was published.