As athletes from around the world arrive in Italy for the 2026 Winter Olympics, they’ll be greeted with snow blanketing the mountaintops—a relief following earlier concerns from the International Ski Federation over snow levels ahead of the competition. But these favorable conditions don’t ease the minds of many athletes who believe climate action is paramount to keeping the Games alive.
The Italian Alps faced unusually warm weather around the holidays, as the region is being affected by warmer average winter temperatures overall. February temperatures in Cortina have warmed 6.4°F since the town first hosted the Winter Olympics in 1956, according to research from Climate Central.
It’s not just Cortina, climate change is impacting winter weather around the world. Climate Central research has found that out of 93 potential host sites, only 52 would have reliable conditions for the Winter Olympics in the 2050s.
Read more: ‘We’re Rolling the Dice.’ What Climate Change Means for the Winter Olympics
Ahead of this year’s games, a number of athletes, including American freestyle skier Alex Hall, signed a petition urging the International Olympics Committee to end sponsorships with fossil fuel companies. The Italian oil company Eni is a “Premier Partner” of this year’s winter games. (As of publication, neither the IOC nor ENI have commented on the petition.)
From encouraging athletes to donate to climate solutions to advocating for cleaner waterways, here are some of the ways Olympic athletes are stepping up to take climate action.
Pragnya Mohan
Indian triathlete Pragnya Mohan co-founded the organization “Ek Beti, Ek Cycle,” which repairs used bicycles and gives them to young women in rural areas—providing them a reliable mode of transport to access their education while promoting sustainable travel and reuse.
Mohan has also advocated for climate action on the global stage. At the United Nations climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan in November 2024, she described the challenges a changing climate is presenting for athletes around the world who have to contend with rising air pollution, hot and humid temperatures, and lack of clean waterways.
“In the future, if climate change is not addressed and is not thoughtfully handled, triathlons can cease to exist,” Mohan warned.
Jacquie Pierri
When she’s not on the ice as a defenseman for the Italian women’s hockey team, Jacquie Pierri is working as a sustainability engineer, finding ways to lower the sport’s carbon footprint. Many hockey rinks around the world use hydrofluorocarbons to cool rinks. These greenhouse gases have a global warming impact hundreds to thousands of times greater than that of carbon dioxide (carbon dioxide, however, lingers much longer in the atmosphere). Pierri has studied the effectiveness of alternatives, like liquid ammonia, to cool rinks, and has spoken out against the NHL’s 2021 partnership with a chemical company that involved promoting harmful hydrofluorocarbons, despite other available cooling options.
Read more: Italy’s Ski Resorts Grapple With a Snowless Future
Hugo Inglis
New Zealand hockey player Hugo Inglis, who was awarded a 2025 Climate Action Award by the IOC ahead of the 2026 games, co-founded “High Impact Athletes,” a movement that encourages athletes to help fund evidence-based charities supporting global health, animal welfare, and climate change. The group supports organizations like the Clean Air Task Force, which is working to reduce air pollution emissions from fossil fuels, and the Good Food Institute, an international nonprofit working to transform the global food system away from conventional animal agriculture. The group has brought over 230 athletes together in support of its goal of high impact funding to the world’s most pressing issues.
Imogen Grant
Rower Imogen Grant, who won gold for Great Britain in Paris less than two years ago, helped launch the Clean Water Sport Alliance in 2024 to address water quality and pollution in U.K. waterways. She also worked to help British Rowing’s National Training Centre operate more sustainably, introducing measures like food waste composting, plastic recycling, and the regular testing of water quality.
She was encouraged to take action after witnessing water degradation throughout her years of training. “I’ve been rowing for 10 years. I have seen the changes in the water. I have ridden past floating nappies, seen used tampons floating and hanging in the trees on the sides of the bank, and I’ve seen dead fish,” she told BBC Sport in 2024. “Seeing the degradation of our waterways has been really difficult.”
Kevin Wekesa
Kenyan rugby player Kevin Wekesa founded “Play Green,” a sustainability initiative that uses sports to promote climate awareness and action. The project focuses on small, actionable steps towards sustainability—including tree planting, ending single-use plastics in sport, and youth education on topics like climate action, recycling, and the circular economy.
The initiative spearheaded the replacement of single-use plastic bottles with reusable aluminium bottles for Kenya’s national rugby teams, saving nearly 1,000 plastic bottles every week, supported the planting of 2,300 trees, and engaged thousands of children in climate education at over 40 schools.
Wekesa is now working to scale up the program across Kenya, and create a model that can be replicated around the world. “Sustainability doesn’t have to be complicated,” he said after being honored at the 2025 IOC Climate Action Awards. “Small, practical steps, like reusable bottles, sustainable travel, recycling and tree planting, can make a real difference when done together as a team.”
Lina Taylor
Lina Taylor, two-time beach volleyball Olympian for Bulgaria, used her background as a scientist to start a Climate Executive Coaching non-profit, which has provided science-based climate education and coaching to over 2,000 people in 30 countries and across 60 organisations.
She has written about the unique platform Olympians have to inspire climate action. “We’re uniquely positioned to bridge gaps between communities, industries, and nations—gaps we must close to turn the climate challenges into opportunities for a better functioning society that regenerates our planet.”
Jessie Diggins
Jessie Diggins, who became the first American to win Olympic gold in cross country skiing at the 2018 Games, is a board member of Protect Our Winters (POW), one of the largest climate advocacy groups in the world. She joined other Olympians in advocating for climate action on Capitol Hill in 2022, pushing for funding for programs focusing on emissions reduction and an end to Arctic drilling.
In 2025, she and her teammates partnered with POW, debuting a speedsuit at the World Championships that depicted a melting glacier. “Having a World Championship racing suit that reflects the current climate crisis that we are in is such an important part of advocacy that we can bring to sport as humans, not just as athletes,” she said at the time. “My hope is that seeing us race in these suits that visually show the impact of our changing climate will be a reminder of what’s at stake.”
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