An almost forgotten chapter of history saw the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics trigger an end to tobacco sponsorship in sport. 

With current winter sports sponsors melting the snow on which they depend, could the next Winter Olympics kill fossil fuel sponsorship too?

Read the ‘Olympics Torched’ report now.

Steve Podborski, the Canadian elite downhill skier, known as one of the “crazy Canucks” for the careless abandon of his skiing style, became the first North American man to win an Olympic downhill medal, at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid. 

Exploiting

But he is remembered also for another kind of boldness - for standing up to the tobacco industry. At the time it widely sponsored winter sports. 

In 1983 Podborski told the Canadian Ski Association that he didn’t want to be associated with the national ski event the ‘Export A' Cup, because of its sponsorship by Canadian cigarette company Macdonald Tobacco and the fact the cup was named after it's brand of cigarettes.

Podborski didn't want to be associated with the promotion of smoking, cigarettes or tobacco - especially as such sponsorship effectively targeted children attracted to the sport.

He told the media at the time that he "won’t ski through a gate with a tobacco logo on it". In doing so he helped energise a campaign that would soon see the Olympics make a historic separation from tobacco sponsorship.

Big tobacco had a long history of exploiting the Olympics and athletes to promote itself. Soon after the first Games of the modern era in Athens, 1896, Olympic athletes were seen on souvenir cigarette cards, and athletes themselves used to promote brands from the 1910s. 

Banned

The United States Tobacco Company, makers of SKOAL and Copenhagen spitting tobacco, sponsored the 1980 US Winter Olympics Team training facility in Lake Placid, New York. 

Attendees were given company branded memorabilia and giveaways, in the hopes of building a larger brand following. Their sponsorship continued up to the 1984 Winter Olympics. 

But opinions were changing thanks to athletes like Podborski. In 1987 physician John Read, who was the father of the Canadian Olympic skier Ken Read, led a campaign for the Calgary, Winter Games in 1988 to become the first ‘smoke-free’ Olympics, when the Canadian Olympic Committee banned tobacco marketing at the Games.

Although it took until 2010 for both Summer and Winter Olympic Games to become completely tobacco free, partly due to the multiple relationships with sponsors held by venues, national Olympic committees and the IOC itself. But the stand taken by Calgary set wheels in motion that resulted in the end of widespread, lethal tobacco sponsorship. 

Specifically, the Calgary Games pushed the IOC to develop a more robust stance on tobacco advertising and sponsorship and, demonstrating the power of sport, accelerated a national ban on tobacco advertising in Canada, that became enshrined later in the Tobacco Act of 1997. It also helped drive momentum behind the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

It is plain enough to anyone visiting actual mountains that snow cover is being lost and glaciers are melting.

Promotion

It means the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics will be remembered as a pivotal moment in the history of the demise of tobacco sponsorship and advertising in sport. 

Though the International Olympic Committee (IOC) formally cut ties with tobacco companies that year, initially their policy only applied to Olympic branding, not local organising committees or broadcasters. And, at the time of the tournament, Canada did not have a comprehensive tobacco advertising ban. 

Canadian television channels, for example, were saturated with advertisements from tobacco companies that still leveraged the Winter Olympic Games to push their products. But the sport itself was playing an integral role in creating the conditions for both a change of opinion, and a change in the law. 

Marketing by Big Tobacco drew international condemnation, with the World Health Organization (WHO) and a number of international anti-smoking charities decrying the scale of tobacco advertising around a sporting mega-event. 

The Canadian Medical Association warned that the extent of tobacco advertising and promotion undermined the Olympic values and promoted smoking to children. 

Pollution

The IOC responded with stronger commitments to eliminate tobacco sponsorship and advertisement. By the 1990s, host cities were required to ensure no tobacco advertising or sponsorship would occur within Olympic venues or associated events. The 1994 Lillehammer Winter Olympics was the first Games to be considered fully “tobacco-free”. 

The 1988 Games highlighted the dirty tactics of tobacco companies to exploit regulatory loopholes and cynically push its products on the public whilst well-aware of the harms they caused. 

Tobacco ad bans led to significant drops in smoking and commensurate drops in premature deaths related to smoking. Leap forward a few decades and sponsorship of sport by lethal products has switched from tobacco to oil, gas and coal and their co-dependent industries like aviation and cars. 

Today the number of people killed by the air pollution alone from the burning of fossil fuels is estimated to be as many as eight million, on a par with tobacco, and fossil sponsors are all over sport. 

Most ironically they are big sponsors of winter sports in spite of their climate heating pollution melting the very snow that such sports depend on. 

Glacier

The Milan Cortina Games are sponsored by supermajor oil company Eni, and indeed Canada’s own team sponsor is PetroCanada, the retail branch of Suncor, which is heavily involved in very polluting tar sands production.

A new report, Olympics Torched, co-published on ‘World Snow Day’, Sunday, 18th January, 2026, by Scientists for Global Responsibility and my own think tank, the New Weather Institute, in association with the athlete-led group Champions for Earth, makes the point graphically. 

It also highlights the environmental impact of merely staging mega global sports events. 

Based only on official data - and excluding emissions related to sponsorship deals with major polluters - the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan Cortina will cause climate-warming emissions of around 930,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, and lead to an estimated loss of 2.3 square kilometres of snow cover - the equivalent in area of around 1,300 Olympic sized ice hockey rinks - and over 14 million tonnes of glacier ice.

But, just three promotional sponsorship deals between the Games and major polluters - oil and gas producer, Eni; car-maker, Stellantis; and ITA Airways - are estimated to result in further emissions of approximately 1.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent - 40 per cent more emissions than the Games’ own direct footprint - and lead to additional estimated future losses of 3.2 square kilometres of snow cover - the equivalent in area of around 1,800 Olympic sized ice hockey rinks - and over 20 million tonnes of glacier ice. 

Mountain

The total impact for the games and these sponsorship deals will lead to approximately 5.5 square kilometres of snow cover loss - the equivalent in area of over 3,000 Olympic sized ice hockey rinks - and over 34 million tonnes of glacier ice.

Stuart Parkinson is a climate scientist, the director of Scientists for Global Responsibility, and the lead author of the report.

He said: “Even without the growing mountain of scientific evidence on the impact of global heating on winter sports, it is plain enough to anyone visiting actual mountains that snow cover is being lost and glaciers are melting.

This report adds to that evidence by showing that winter sports themselves contribute to that impact both directly through their carbon emissions and by promoting major polluters through advertising and sponsorship. But this also means that winter sports can be part of the solution, by cleaning up their own acts and dropping dirty sponsors.”

Following in Podborski’s snow tracks, elite athletes and Winter Olympians themselves can see that the toxic relationship between sport and big polluters represents a fundamental threat to the future of winter sports. 

Elite

Ukaleq Slettemark, is a biathlete, Winter Olympian and former World Junior Champion from Greenland. She said: “It is not justifiable that winter sports are giving oil companies a platform to look like they're contributing positively to society, when the reality is that they are not. 

"It's a complete contradiction when the fossil fuel industry is the biggest contributor to climate change, to making winters disappear and therefore also a threat to the very existence of winter sports.”

Björn Sandström, the Swedish professional cross-country skier, said: “As an athlete whose joy and livelihood comes from skiing I want a world where it can continue. 

"The Olympics will always generate emissions, and reducing them must be a priority. But the Games’ greatest influence is the signal they send to the world. When that signal is driven by fossil-fuel sponsorship, it directly contradicts climate science and threatens the future of winter sport.”

For good reason concern is spreading not just among elite athletes but anyone who loves snow and winter sports.

Spectators

Italy, host to the 2026 Winter Olympics, lost a reported 265 ski resorts in the last five years, while Switzerland has seen 55 ski lifts and cable cars closed. 

France, due to host the next Games in 2030 has seen the loss of over 180 Alpine ski resorts. The disappearance of snow due to global heating is obviously a prime factor undermining winter sports, with the Games increasingly dependent on artificial snow. 

Without change, Milan Cortina will hand a baton of melting snow and ice to the French Alpine hosts of 2030. But, instead of being a billboard for the carbon emissions behind climate breakdown, the Winter Games could draw on its own recent history to be a poster child for progress towards clean, pollution-free sport. 

The most effective actions for reducing emissions, according to our report, would be for the Winter Olympics to end sponsorship deals with high-carbon corporations, avoid the construction of new venues and other infrastructure, and significantly reduce the number of spectators travelling by air. 

Watershed

A new website has been launched in advance of the Milan Cortina Games to provide regular updates on the threat to the Winter Olympics and winter sports from climate pollution at savethewintergames.com. 

Elsewhere, Cool Down - the Sport for Climate Action Network is promoting the Fossil Free Declaration for a tobacco-style ban on major polluters sponsoring sport, and a new, athlete-led petition to end fossil fuel sponsorship in winter sports ‘Ski Fossil Free’ has recently been launched.

Today the Olympic movement stands in relation to fossil fuel sponsorship just as it did to tobacco sponsors in 1987. The opportunity is there not only to show leadership, but to act in a way to preserve the future of the Winter Olympics, and the well being, health and livelihoods of its athletes. 

This games should be a watershed leading to no future Games ever again being a billboard for promoting fossil fuel pollution. And, with the Winter Olympics that should start with France 2030.

This Author

Andrew Simms is co-director of the New Weather Institute, assistant director of Scientists for Global Responsibility, co-founder of the Badvertising campaign, coordinator of the Rapid Transition Alliance, an author on new and green economics, joint proposer of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, and co-author of the original Green New Deal. Follow on Bluesky @andrewsimms.bsky.social. 

Read the ‘Olympics Torched’ report now.