World Cups in Dubai and Las Vegas?
Ski jumping says goodbye to winter sports
03/30/2023, 11:17 am
No joke: Ski jumping will take place for the first time in April at the weekend. It is quite possible that the World Cup will even be held in Dubai in the future. The advantage of the sport in times of climate change: ski jumping can get by with little snow, in case of doubt even with none at all.
The strength is dwindling, the last snow anyway, but the ski jumpers just keep going: While biathletes, tobogganists and Co. have long been lazy, competitions will take place on the weekend in April for the first time in the history of the World Cup. “The batteries of the active are largely empty,” says national coach Stefan Horngacher, but the premiere could be the harbinger of a small revolution.
The season, which ends on Sunday in Planica, Slovenia, is already the longest in history. At the beginning of November, the starting gun was fired in Wisla, Poland – for the first time on mats because there was no snow. This is now also in Planica only on the surrounding mountain peaks – and a miserable remainder in the outrun of the ski jump. But that is exactly the big advantage of ski jumping in times of climate change: the sport can get by with little snow, in case of doubt even with none at all. That’s why there are considerations to extend the World Cup to the whole year – so why not go straight to Dubai?
As a first step, DSV sports director Horst Hüttel has brought a Four Hills Tournament into play in the summer to upgrade the Grand Prix series from July to October, which has so far received little attention. It would be helpful “if the FIS could decide to call the whole thing the World Cup,” Hüttel told the news portal t-online. “Whether we then have a separate summer and a separate winter World Cup must be discussed.”
“Better, we call ourselves extreme sports”
So will there be twelve months of ski jumping in a row in the future? That would be a bit much, says Norway’s national coach Alexander Stöckl and suggests a “season in blocks” – there would also be free weekends in winter. In general, the Austrian finds thinking in the “winter sports” category outdated. “Better, we call ourselves extreme sports,” said Stöckl of the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”.
In FIS race director Sandro Pertile, Stöckl has a counterpart who thinks along similar lines; the Italian also likes the idea of year-round sport. “Ski jumping is a show,” Pertile told the Slovenian daily Dnevnik in early March. He dreams of a mobile ski jump that can be set up anywhere in the world. “Competing in Dubai or in Las Vegas would definitely be something that ski jumping urgently needs,” said Pertile.
But these are all still visions, and Planica will also land on snow at the weekend. However, the weather in the “Valley of the Schanzen” will not be wintry, double-digit temperatures and rain are announced. By the way: There was only a hair’s breadth about a World Cup in April. A competition was scheduled for March 31, 1991 in Strbske Pleso, Slovakia, which had to be canceled at short notice. It was just snowing too hard.