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Here lies the snow: Ushuaia on the Argentine side of Tierra del Fuego
The Alpine World Cup season hasn’t started yet, but the first serious injuries have already been reported. The Austrian slalom specialist Katharina Gallhuber, bronze medalist at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, tore her cruciate ligament and meniscus during training. Scene: Ushuaia on the Argentine side of Tierra del Fuego, at the »end of the world«.
This year practically the entire ski elite is preparing for the season in the mountains of South America. This is ironic in that the Swedish-British billionaire Johan Eliasch, President of the International Ski Federation (FIS), announced in November 2021 that the FIS would be the “first climate-positive winter sports association”. The training camps in South America represent a clear step backwards in this regard. In recent decades, they have been gradually scaled back in favor of training camps on European glaciers. The comeback has two reasons.
The first is obvious: the climate crisis makes summer training camps in the European Alps almost impossible. The Swiss national team, which was based in Zermatt this year, had to abandon its training camp there at the end of July due to a lack of snow. According to climate experts, none of the five glaciers that still exist in Germany will exist in ten years. In all likelihood, the southern Schneeferner will disappear before the end of this year.
The second reason for the return to the South American mountains is homemade: The ski industry is demanding an advertising boost in autumn, and so the FIS is sticking to the fact that the World Cup season will open with the giant slaloms at the end of October on the Rettenbachferner Glacier near Sölden. Starting this year, there will be additional descents on the Theodul Glacier on the Matterhorn on the two following weekends: start in Switzerland, finish in Italy.
The glacier races mean that the World Cup teams are practically forced into training camps in South America. If the World Cup season started a month later, preparations in Europe would still be possible. And if the downhill riders continued to contest their first races in North America at the end of November, they could still hold their last weeks of training there.
Not only athletes, trainers and supervisors have to be shipped to South America, but also a lot of equipment. Ten tons of material were shipped for the Austrian men’s ski team alone, including 1,000 pairs of skis. Costs: around 150,000 euros. Nothing must be left to chance, every hundredth of a second counts.
Winter sports enthusiasts are dependent on ski associations and sponsors, and resistance rarely arises. But the critical voices are getting louder. The four-time overall World Cup winner Mikaela Shiffrin, currently the biggest star in the ski circuit, repeatedly questions the future of alpine skiing. The climate-positive FIS President Eliasch doesn’t care much. After the traditional November races in North America, he will send the men there again in March next season. That pleases the local business partners, especially since there is a question mark over the November races. If no agreement can be reached with FIFA regarding kick-off times for the World Cup in Qatar, which is being held at the same time, they could fall off the calendar. No World Cup races without satisfactory ratings.
Johan Eliasch replaced the Swiss Gian Franco Kasper at the head of the FIS in June 2021. Kasper had presided over the association for 23 years as the sole ruler. Eliash seems intent on following in his footsteps. Eliasch has no qualifications as a sports official, but he is the managing director of one of the most successful ski sports companies. With the help of the stars under contract to his company and promises of additional income, he brought the majority of the delegates to the FIS Congress 2021 to his side.
The first year of his presidency was not great. Above all, Eliasch’s intention to centrally manage the television and marketing rights for the World Cup races has upset the major national associations. Until now they manage the television and marketing rights of the races held in their countries. When they were happy about the additional income that Eliasch had promised, they did not understand that this should be smuggled past them.
When Eliasch ran for re-election unopposed at the FIS Congress 2022 in Milan, 47 of 117 delegates left the hall. This did not bother the top officials of the FIS. They conducted the election and announced that Eliash had received 100 percent of the votes – after all, all the remaining delegates had voted for him. The ski associations of Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Croatia then lodged an objection to the election with the International Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). The verdict is still pending.
Of course, the problem of the disappearing glaciers does not only affect competitive sports. In the Alps, where alpine skiing was once a popular sport, only the rich can afford it. Until the 1980s there were still inexpensive ski lifts in every village, but soon only ski areas at over 1500 meters above sea level will be able to survive. Getting there is becoming more and more complex, the lift ticket more and more expensive. Even at these altitudes, snow-making systems are necessary to secure the ski season, which consume enormous amounts of energy.
An alternative to artificial snow production is the preservation of the previous year’s snow with the help of reflective protective tarpaulins. Thanks to this, white strips meander through the green landscape in some Alpine valleys, on which you can already ski in autumn. This system is to be expanded, as are the ski halls, in which some World Cup skiers are already doing additional training sessions. Anyone who thinks that skiing is becoming alienated from itself is not entirely wrong. But what counts in capitalism is what creates profits.
