No snow, no races: The Alpine Ski World Cup made an unprecedented false start to the season in this climatically extreme year. The FIS needs to come up with better answers to the climate crisis than its new president’s cloak.
Snow sports wage a war against nature, for example with machines that are commonly referred to as snow cannons.
Not four years ago, Gian Franco Kasper, President of the World Ski Federation FIS until shortly before his death in summer 2021, spoke of “so-called climate change” in an interview with the “Tages-Anzeiger”. There is no evidence that “we have snow, sometimes a lot,” said Kasper. Instead of looking at science, the most influential official in the world of snow sports preferred to stick to the church register of his hometown of St. Moritz, which records an 18th-century winter with the first snowfall in March.
It would be more disastrous than ever if the FIS were still led by a climate skeptic. Because it has never been more obvious than now how much climate change is threatening the very existence of winter sports. It’s only mid-November, and yet eight World Cup ski races should have taken place in the new season, all in the Alps. Six had to be canceled due to lack of snow, one due to bad weather. It can now continue next weekend with two women’s slaloms in Finland, north of the Arctic Circle.
Snow sports have long distanced themselves from nature
“We have to respect mother nature and the signals of climate change – and rethink the data,” said FIS race director Markus Waldner in Sölden, where at least the men’s giant slalom could take place on the second to last weekend in October. Although Waldner sounded different than his long-time boss Gian Franco Kasper, one wondered whether he was really aware of how far snow sports have already moved away from nature.
Without artificial snow, the World Cup would no longer be possible. But touristic snow sports are also more of a struggle against nature, for example with machines that are sensibly called snow cannons in general usage, than being in harmony with nature.
A short recapitulation of this climatically extreme year from a slightly different ski racing perspective: Olympic Winter Games in China, in a region that is so dry that the slopes are made of 100 percent artificial snow – and everyone widens their eyes when one Sunday actually sees natural snow falls from the sky. A hot summer in which skiing in the most important training destinations in the northern hemisphere, Zermatt and Saas-Fee, has to be temporarily suspended or greatly reduced. An autumn that is so abnormally warm that the final section of the new World Cup downhill run on the Matterhorn simply cannot be snowed (artificially, of course), even though the finish is at 2835 meters above sea level.
When the supposed spectacle in Zermatt and Cervinia had to be cancelled, fundamental criticism of the transnational project suddenly rained down. Wrongly, for the most part, as these races are more environmentally friendly than most. On the Matterhorn, skiing is mainly done on glacier snow; it only needed minor structural measures; there would have been no crowds of spectators like in Wengen or Kitzbühel – due to the limited accessibility, the event is designed more as a TV than a live event.
However, it is undoubtedly appropriate to implement the transfer later in the autumn.
Johan Eliasch’s Zwangerei fell on his feet
Zermatt/Cervinia stands for the expansion plans of ski racing: more races, a complete calendar from the end of October to mid-March, new destinations and markets. Johan Eliasch, Gian Franco Kasper’s successor as FIS President, personifies this strategy. The project of a glacier descent from Valais to the Aosta Valley had been finalized before taking office and without the help of the Swedish-British billionaire; but in order to be able to come up with at least one sensational innovation, Eliasch pushed through that the premiere on the Matterhorn should take place this year instead of next. Now the Zwangerei has fallen on his feet.
Eliasch started with the promise to make better use of the commercial potential of FIS sports. Grow, globalize, market centrally. Back to China as soon as possible. And for the sustainability problem he has brought along the right cloak: the FIS Rainforest Initiative. The FIS praises itself as the first climate-positive international sports federation. How she got it: By saving Peruvian rainforest in the Amazon region from deforestation, the CO2-Footprint of all FIS activities compensated several times. Greenwashing for peace of mind.
When the rainforest initiative was presented a year ago, Eliasch was quoted as follows: “After my election, one of my top priorities was to do something that would immediately and significantly improve the sustainability of our sport. We are not only obliged to do this as good citizens of the world, because nowadays it is a basic requirement in order to be an attractive sport, especially for the younger generations. »
Has climate skeptic Gian Franco Kasper been replaced by a climate rescuer?
Eliasch makes it easy for himself. He would do well to come up with better answers than this sale of indulgences, which neither the younger nor the older generations should fall for. Doing good for the rainforest, traveling to North America twice this season with the men’s World Cup entourage instead of just once as usual? Fifty hours of snow cannon operation at minus two degrees air temperature – how many Peruvian trees is that?
Growth plans and climate protection are fundamentally opposed to each other. The ski seasons are getting shorter because even the time window in which slopes can be artificially snowed depends on the temperature. The efforts to expand the World Cup calendar seem paradoxical, especially since the highest racing series has never gotten beyond the status of a niche product in North America – not to mention Asia.
Ski racing at world level is not environmentally friendly per se – training camps on the other side of the world, large fleets of vehicles that move from place to place, the technical effort with which training and racing slopes are prepared. However, one can certainly attest to an increased awareness of those involved, anything else would be disturbing after these months of extremes. The national association Swiss Ski recently Sustainability Strategy Paper passed, in which, for example, in the area of mobility, the goal is defined to reduce the CO2-Reduce emissions by 36 percent by 2030.
However, it is problematic for the credibility of such efforts if the Swiss athletes are flown back to the start in a helicopter from the village on the next Lauberhorn descent in Wengen instead of taking the train and chairlift. Or when the Patrouille Suisse once again pulls off its air show as part of the supporting programme, as if a ski race with the character of a folk festival weren’t enough for the audience.
Romanticism gives way to pragmatism
How the appearance of winter sports is changing could also be observed at the season opening of the Ski Jumping World Cup on the first weekend of November in Poland. The inrun track was made of artificial ice, but the landing slope was not covered with snow, but with green mats like those used in summer operations.
One or two romantics might have hurt their eyes at the sight, but the pragmatic attitude, which the German team manager Horst Hüttel represented, is the longer it is, the more contemporary it is. Hüttel told ARD: “The question of the future will not be what we want – but what we can do. What can still be represented in our society? (. . .) Climate change is real. With an ice track and mat, ski jumping would have a solution and a concept to counteract this.”
Winter sports are caught in a dilemma that many other industries are familiar with. But for the FIS there would definitely be a groundbreaking approach to alleviate this dilemma: the voluntary renunciation of growth, of more and more. Increasing the quality instead of the quantity of the events, optimizing the tour plan with a view to the footprint, smaller fields of participation and smaller support staff.
The FIS could content itself with being the most important Olympic winter sports federation, instead of striving for a radiance that is global and encompasses as many months of the year as possible – as they have achieved in addition to the overwhelmingly dominant football, for example, Formula 1 or tennis. But under this president, nothing like that will happen. Not just because Johan Eliasch, as the owner of the ski manufacturer Head, is also looking for new sales markets.