The last weekend of October has a special meaning for ski lovers: it is the World Cup has begun of alpine skiing with the double giant slalom (men’s and women’s) of Söldenon the Rettenbach glacier, in Austria. A glacier which, like many others, is suffering greatly from the higher temperatures each year and the winters which never really seem to arrive, and which, like many other World Cup ski slopes, uses the latest technologies to avoid disappearing such as the use of thermal sheets which reflect the sun’s rays (with which the glacier is covered during the warmer months), or the snow farming, the technique through which winter snow is collected and stored at high altitude and then stored reused in winter.
Two techniques which, on the one hand, allow us to guarantee a stable season for professional and non-professional skiers, and on the other hand make us understand how short the blanket is of winter sports and how it is increasingly complex to guarantee the presence of snow, an element that is no longer taken for granted, but a good that must be administeredproduced, defended. Competitive skiing increasingly depends on technological and logistical interventions to exist. And this changes the very nature of the competitions: they are no longer just challenges between athletes, but also between organizers who have to deal with a system increasingly fragile which should be radically revised.
In the Alpine Skiing World Cup the cancellations oh postponements of the races have stopped being occasional events to become a recurring element in recent seasons. Dozens of locations hit by bad weather or lack of suitable conditions, historic events missed due to unseasonal rainfall, excessively high temperatures or storms that made the slopes dangerous. The trend is evident: races are no longer canceled due to individual exceptional events but due to a variability in climatic conditions that has become structural.
The 25/26 Alpine Skiing World Cup and the athletes’ activism
There Alpine Skiing World Cup, organized by the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS), takes place every year from the end of October to March and involves races in various locations around the world, assigning points based on placings in each discipline (downhill, super giant slalom, giant slalom, special slalom). At the end of the season, whoever has accumulated the most points wins the overall World Cup, as well as the specialty cups dedicated to the best in each individual discipline. The first races of giant slalom on the Rettenbach glacier a Sölden they saw the Austrian victory Julia Scheib in the women’s (with the exit of Sofia Goggia in the first heat) and the Swiss Marco Odermatt in the masculine. The next appointment is scheduled for the weekend of November 16-17 to Leviin Finland, where the special slalom races will be held.
The World Cup calendar, however, is increasingly subject to the uncertainty of the weather: cancellations and postponements have become a constant in recent seasons. Too high temperatures and lack of snow highlight how the climate variability is now a factor that threatens the regularity of the circuit.
There reaction more significant came from within, from the athletes themselves. In 2023 over 500 professional skiers have signed a letter addressed to the FIS asking for concrete measures to adapt to the climate crisis and try to reduce the impact of sport on the mountains that host these disciplines: a calendar redesigned to minimize large movements and minimize therefore emissions, a sustainability strategy that aims to offset the carbon dioxide emissions produced (the so-called net-zero), and greater transparency in environmental impact with binding objectives, so that we can save a sport who seems destined to die.
The initiative, promoted by former professional skier and activist Julian Schütter and supported by the non-profit organisation Protect Our Wintersfounded by former snowboarder Jeremy Jones, has collected tens of thousands of signatures: it is no longer just a symbolic position, it is a concrete movement that wants to change the rules of the game. This activism, supported on the front line by the athletes themselves, has changed the debate: in federal offices they are no longer just talking about tracks and commissioners, but also about climate scienceCO₂ offsetting targets and which races still make sense geographically.
The importance of artificial snow for alpine skiing: but at what price?
In all of this, the use of artificial snow plays an increasingly fundamental role every year: on the one hand essential, on the other in contrast with “zero impact”. In fact, artificial snow not only guarantees snow-covered slopes even in the absence of precipitation, but it becomes essential in the preparation of the World Cup slopes to guarantee conditions uniform and safe for all athletes, and ensure that we can start working on the track to prepare it for the race well in advance.
Despite increasingly cutting-edge technologies, snow cannons they can’t work with temperatures above 1°C. With rising temperatures, the “zero freezing point” could rise from the current 850 meters to 1,500 meters by 2060, making the preparation of ski slopes at medium and low altitudes problematic. Furthermore, the necessary energy to operate the cannons and the massive use of water makes this system unsustainable in the long term, albeit increasingly used and supported by public funding to keep ski areas alive that would have already been closed long ago if they had to use only natural snow for their slopes.
In this regard, a study by the University of Waterloo has highlighted how, if emissions were to continue to raise the planet’s temperature, many places that have hosted the Winter Olympics in the past they could no longer accommodate them due to lack of snow. Think about Olympics of the future it will mean asking ourselves where there will be enough natural snow left, where it will still be possible to guarantee athletes fair and safe conditions and how much it will cost to make artificial what nature no longer offers.
The reasoning is simple: ski racing requires a certain number of days with adequate snow cover and favorable temperatures. If that “reservoir” shrinks, the choice of locations narrows to higher areas or with specific climatic characteristics. There consequence it would be a sport increasingly concentrated on a few high altitude locations, or on extremely “artificialized” facilities.
The “FIS Impact” program and future prospects for the Alpine skiing world cup
Faced with this emergency, the FIS has put tools and commitments on the table. Last season he was introduced the “Impact Programme”a roadmap that includes, among other things, the 50% emissions reduction by 2030 and the net-zero target for FIS activities by 2040thus compensating for all the greenhouse gases emitted. The Federation has also started a technical collaboration with the World Meteorological Organization to improve the forecasting and management of racing conditions. These first steps represent a huge change in language and practice compared to the past, driven by the thousands of signatures collected by athletes and enthusiasts, who however believe that the measure is not yet sufficient, underlining the need for more binding objectives and above all how it is not enough to “do something” to “do enough”.
Considering the current situation, we can hypothesize what the future of winter sports will be according to two scenarios, one optimistic and one pessimistic. In the scenario optimistichumanity will be able to limit global warming to less than 2°C, as required by the Paris Agreement, and most of the venues that have hosted the Winter Olympics in the past will remain climatically reliable at least until 2050, ensuring sufficient time to develop adaptation technologies and strategies.
In the scenario pessimisticwith a temperature increase of 4°C compared to pre-industrial levels, not only would there be climate impacts catastrophic for the entire planet, but only places above 2,400 meters could count on sufficient natural snow, making extremely complicated the practice of winter sports.
