The Ski World Cup is due to take place at the foot of the Matterhorn in a few days, but there isn’t enough snow. While former stars like Felix Neureuther are calling for a rethink, the world association continues to inflate the calendar. The promise of sustainability seems to be worth nothing.
Felix Neureuther has been worried about the sport he loves for a long time. Skiing, he warned, “has the great task of maintaining its credibility”, it should “no longer be allowed to train on the glaciers in the summer between June and September” and then to race there “at a time when where the glaciers melt”. This “makes you vulnerable”. Neureuther’s words are a year old – but more relevant than ever.
This summer, the glacier in Saas-Fee, where numerous nations complete their training camp, had to be temporarily closed due to a lack of snow. The piste on the no longer so permanent ice high above Sölden, where the World Cup begins as usual with giant slalom races for women and men on Saturday and Sunday, is in fact a white band – but next to it you can see gray scree fields. Like Neureuther, German Alpin boss Wolfgang Maier says: “It’s enough if we go there in November.”
Nowhere, however, does the increasingly ludicrous plan to deliver beautiful pictures of alpine ski racing as early as possible become so absurd as in Zermatt. In the coming week, two men’s descents are to take place at the foot of the Matterhorn, with the women taking part a week later. The former Austrian racer and today’s TV expert Hans Knauss described this as “nonsense” – he only says what everyone thinks.
In fact, the men’s races should have been canceled long ago, the slope is not ready for racing: there is not enough snow on the glacier, which cannot be artificially snowed. With what is there, crevasses are pushed shut. The lower section of the route from Zermatt to Cervinia in Italy is practically non-existent. The “snow check” is now planned for Saturday – but by then it would have to be cold to be able to produce enough artificial snow.
Wolfgang Maier can only shake his head at all these developments. His suggestion: “The framework conditions must be changed.” That means: “We don’t start until the beginning or middle of November with the World Cup and then only go until mid-March.” So at times when there is still reasonably reliable snow. “We just have to accept that,” he says. But the International Ski and Snowboard Federation FIS around its controversial President Johan Eliasch doesn’t seem to care much about credibility.
Eliasch talked himself into the office with the promise that everything would get better and that, of course, attention should also be paid to sustainability. Instead, the racing program remains inflated for the benefit of constant profit maximization: 42 races for women, 43 for men, plus the World Championships in February (6th to 19th) in the two French winter sports resorts of Courchevel and Meribel. The World Cup doesn’t seem to be stopping it from digging its own grave.
It could also be different. “More races don’t mean more quality,” says Maier in an interview. More quality means for him: fewer races – at the best locations. “In this way we upgrade the events and we then raise them big, like they do in Kitzbühel or Wengen.” Due to climate change, however, the races in these places are no longer safe.
(This article was first published on Wednesday, October 19, 2022.)