(Bloomberg) -- Climate change may force organizers to rotate the Winter Olympic Games among a small group of host cities, including Salt Lake City, said Gene Sykes, the chair of US Olympic & Paralympic Committee.

“You can’t have a Winter Games in every city that’s hosted a Winter Games in the past,” Sykes said at a Team USA media summit in New York on Wednesday. The idea of the cities in the US and other countries being in a permanent rotation “makes an awful lot of sense and it makes the movement stronger.”

Sykes, co-chairman of global mergers and acquisitions at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., said investing in cities like Salt Lake City may provide stability for the future because “the presence of winter conditions” is key to competition.

“Our country is very important to the success of the Olympic and Paralympic movement,” Sykes said.

The 2026 Winter Olympics will be held in the Italian cities of Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo. The host of the 2030 Winter Games will be selected before the start of the Paris Olympics in July, with the French Alps already the leading contender.

Salt Lake City has been named as a preferred host for the 2034 Winter Olympics by the International Olympic Committee, with a formal announcement also expected in July. That would be just six years after the US hosts the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. 

There may be “two Olympic and Paralympic experiences in one decade in this country,” Sykes said. The USOPC has time to engage philanthropists, corporate sponsors and commercial partners, he said, adding that stakeholders can think about it “as a continuum, not an episode.”

Utah Governor Spencer Cox said last month on PBS that Salt Lake City could become a permanent host of the Winter Olympics.

Ongoing partnership with the NCAA and various colleges, as well as continued investment in sports at the college level will be key to development of young athletes from the US and other nations, Sykes said.

“We have a real interest in making sure that ecosystem continues to be healthy,” he said.

Title IX, the landmark 1972 law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in school sports, is responsible for the fact that there are more female than male Olympic and Paralympic athletes in the US, Sykes added. 

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