“Absurd” for Clément Noël, “no sense”, for Alexis Pinturault: the awarding of the 2029 Asian Winter Games to Saudi Arabia in early October has once again put the environment at the center of conversations in the world of sports. ‘winter.
If the International Ski Federation (FIS) has no control over the designation of the host country of the Asian Games, it is attacking the new season of its showcase sport without having made the turn that many players were hoping for.
Because during last summer, once again particularly hot, professional skiers were able to observe and relay the catastrophic state of the Alpine glaciers, their usual training ground of which they were partly deprived. Swiss glaciers, for example, shattered all melting records in 2022, losing 6% of their total volume.
In the middle of the European Indian summer, it is however on two glaciers that the Alpine Skiing World Cup resumes for the next three weeks.
– L’interrogation Zermatt/Cervinia –
In Sölden, on the Rettenbach, artificial snow does not seem to be a problem for the races scheduled for Saturday and Sunday. This is not the case for the slopes at the foot of the iconic Matterhorn, for two unprecedented downhill stages at the end of October (men) and the beginning of November (women) straddling the Swiss resorts of Zermatt and the Italian resorts of Cervinia.
Faced with the total absence of snow at the bottom of the route, the FIS postponed its traditional “snow control”, the snow test which confirms the holding of an alpine ski event, by six days, to give a chance the cold to set in and the snow cannons to do their job.
“Other stations would not have had the same chances for snow control. I think it’s more the FIS that pushes for the races than the Zermatt station,” the Olympic vice-champion slipped to AFP. of descent, the Frenchman Johan Clarey.
Announced with great fanfare just before the Beijing Olympics in February, contested on virgin slopes of natural snow, the stages of the Matterhorn, at the heart of a pharaonic modernization project, raise questions. They pose immense logistical problems, with in particular the transport of equipment (nets, cameras, etc.) by helicopter, for departures at an altitude of 3,700 meters.
“A lot of efforts in favor of the environment are made in the resorts to welcome the general public. So doing races that go against that, I don’t know if we give a very good image of our sport” , lamented the experienced Clarey (41).
– The fate of the Russians decided on Saturday –
At the center of criticism, the calendar continues to offer some aberrant trips. For example, the men will travel to North America twice this season, with a second visit in February/March which concerns all specialties and will require many skiers to cross the Atlantic for a single race.
FIS officials insist they do not have full control of the program. One of the reasons for the fight behind the scenes around TV rights: the FIS would like to group them under its wing to gain weight, which is contested by leading federations such as Switzerland or Austria.
Saturday, day of the women’s giant, the body meets its Council which will have to decide in particular on the fate of Russian and Belarusian athletes, banned from all its disciplines (alpine but also Nordic skiing, freestyle and snowboarding) since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, on February 24.
Without much impact in the alpine, the participation of the Russians raises a major question in cross-country skiing, a sport in which they had won nearly a third of the medals at the last Olympics.
On the sporting level, the American Mikaela Shiffrin and the Swiss Marco Odermatt are the favorites to keep their big Crystal Globes. The peak of the season will be the World Championships in Courchevel and Méribel (from February 6 to 19, 2023).
