The Winter Olympics are threatened by climate change, which reduces the number of places likely to host this high mass of world sport, warns a report published Wednesday, January 26 in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics.
“The risk is clear: human-induced warming threatens the long-term future of winter sports”, underlines this report produced by researchers from the Sport Ecology Group of the English University of Loughborough and the association Protect Our Winters. “It also reduces the number of venues suitable for winter Olympics”, he adds.
The document takes as an example the Winter Olympics scheduled for February 4 to 20 in Beijing, which will be the first to depend largely on artificial snow.
300 snow cannons
“The 2022 Winter Games will undoubtedly be an awe-inspiring spectacle, which millions around the world will watch and enjoy”, notes the report, which adds: “But they should also spark debate about the future of the Winter Games and the limits of making artificial natural environments. » According to the report, more than 100 snow generators and 300 snow cannons will work tirelessly to cover the ski slopes with fake snow.
This process is energy-intensive, water-intensive and requires the use of chemicals to slow the melting of the snow, the authors point out. It also makes surfaces unpredictable and potentially dangerous according to many competitors.
Of the twenty-one sites that have hosted the Winter Games since Chamonix in 1924, only ten by 2050 could still be suitable for hosting such an event, with sufficient natural snowfall. Chamonix as well as other sites in France, Norway and Austria are now classified “high risk”, while Vancouver, Sochi and the Squaw Valley in the United States are judged “unreliable”.