Alpine Ski World Cup grapples with climate challenges
October 30, 2023
A little snow did fall after all on the Rettenbach glacier this past weekend. The glacier, which lies near Sölden, Austria, is where the Alpine Ski World Cup kicked off its new season with two giant slalom races. While the women's event went off without a hitch on Saturday, Sunday's men's competition had to be canceled due to high winds.
Sölden has hosted the opening event of the season since 2000. This year, there wasn't much of a winter feel to the weekend until the very end; the mountains around the glacier were barely covered with snow, the slopes towards the valley were green, the trees sporting the colors of autumn. And even up on the glacier, the thin layer of fresh snow could hardly conceal the problems that Alpine ski racing is facing.
Stored spring snow
"I think the slope is perfect for hosting a World Cup opener," Felix Neureuther told Bavarian media a few weeks ago. "But the end of October is just too early."
Neureuther, who was Germany's top ski racer before he retired from the sport in 2019, is concerned about the event's future, partly because organizers are having to contend with less and less natural snow on the slopes.
To get the Rettenbach slopes ready for last weekend's event, 45,000 cubic meters (nearly 1.6 million cubic feet) of snow that had been stored in depots since April was spread over the course. This is not the first time organizers have had to take such measures to ensure that the season opener could go ahead.
Such circumstances have caused some to question the wisdom of starting the winter season so early. However, the Ski World Federation FIS under President Johan Eliasch has inflated the World Cup calendar to 45 races for both the women and men in recent years, leaving little scope for moving the opener to a later date.
Still, Eliasch surprised Austrian public broadcaster ORF on the weekend when he said: "I also don't understand who is interested in ski racing in October and why we race on glaciers without snow."
Eliasch said he hoped that the Austrian Ski Association would be open to moving back the Sölden event.
He had also, however, pushed for races to be held on the Matterhorn in mid-November. At the end of November, the World Cup heads to North America for a couple of weekends before returning to Europe. A race is scheduled for every weekend leading up to Christmas.
This tight schedule forced the October opener in Sölden, as well as all the work that had to be done to get the Rettenbach glacier ready in time. This included the bringing in of excavators to shave off the edge of the glacier in preparation for the application of the stored snow.
That drew harsh criticism from environmentalist groups.
Emotional debate
"The current destruction of nature on the Rettenbach glacier is a disaster. Skiing and conservation are being played off against each other here," Ursula Bittner, an economics specialist at Greenpeace Austria, told Austrian media in September.
The organizers defended themselves, saying it was not a matter of removing the glacier. Instead, they explained, large rocks that had come to the surface as a result of the glacier receding needed to be crushed. Doing so, they argued, meant that less snow was needed to prepare the slope. In other words, the excavator work was in the interest of sustainability.
This illustrates just how emotional and complicated the dispute is between environmental interests and the million-dollar downhill skiing business. It is also indicative of a growing problem for outdoor winter sports in general.
Winter Olympics without winter
The Winter Olympics are no exception. When Sochi, a Black Sea resort with a subtropical climate hosted the 2014 Games, the ski resorts were located dozens of kilometers away. Major construction projects were undertaken to build not only the ski runs but also the infrastructure for traveling between the two locations.
Beijing, the host of the 2022 Winter Games, isn't known for its heavy snowfall either. The same goes for the two Olympic ski resorts, which were located in a region that is cold enough, but hardly gets any precipitation.
Dearth of suitable hosts
"Fewer and fewer countries are capable of hosting the Winter Olympics in the first place," Jules Boykoff told DW. The political scientist from Pacific University in Oregon has been critically examining the Olympic Games and their impact on society and the environment for years.
International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach, too, is well aware of the problem.
"By 2040, there remain, practically, just 10 national Olympic committees who could host these snow events of the Olympic Winter Games," Bach told the recent IOC Congress in Mumbai, based on the findings of a study on future viability.
As a result, the IOC is considering implementing a rotation system for hosts, comprising only a few locations that are all but guaranteed to regularly have the required amount of snow in February.
Too expensive, environmental concerns
As Boykoff noted, the lack of reliable snow is not the only challenge facing the games, with residents of numerous cities having rejected the idea of hosting a Winter or Summer Olympics from 2013 through 2018.
"You are seeing a rising tide of people across the political spectrum who do not want to have the Olympics in their city or in their country because of the price tag and because of the environmental effects," he said.
The 2026 Winter Games are to be hosted by Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo, where mass protests over exploding costs and ecological concerns convinced organizers to abandon plans to build a new bobsleigh and luge track. These events may be moved to Innsbruck, Austria.
Where the Winter Games go after 2026 is unclear and, if no traditional winter venue steps up, the IOC could soon find itself in a dilemma. Saudi Arabia won the right to host the 2029 Asian Winter Games with a plan to spend $500 billion (€472 billion) to construct venues and infrastructure. Depending upon how well that goes, the Winter Olympics could be the next logical step, as early as 2034.
This article was originally published in German.