After three weeks of successive postponements, having relaunched the debate on the adaptation of the discipline to climate change, men’s alpine skiing finally launched its season, Saturday November 18, in the Austrian resort of Gurgl, in Tyrol. This time, not too strong wind, like in Sölden (Austria), at the beginning of October, nor too much snowfall, like in Zermatt (Switzerland) last week, which had forced the organizers of the Ski World Cup to cancel the tests. But the first slalom outing of the year was the scene of an ecological demonstration, on the sidelines of an Austrian hat-trick at home, led by Manuel Feller, Marco Schwarz and Michael Matt.
The Frenchman Clément Noël, well placed at the end of the first round (2nd, 94 hundredths behind the winner of the day), finally had to settle for 12th place. At 31, Manuel Feller won his third World Cup victory. Author of the best time in the first round, the Austrian was able to resist the pressure to close the gate, the return of his compatriot Marco Schwarz and the interruption of the race which followed the impressive passage of the latter during the second sleeve.
A few moments after the Austrian crossed the line, around ten environmental activists from the Last Generation Austria collective, “Listen to the Climate Council” banners in hand, sprinkled the finish area with orange powder, causing the interruption running for several minutes. While the security forces and the police were evacuating the demonstrators, the Norwegian skier Henrik Kristoffersen, furious, wanted to attack one of them, before being restrained at the last minute by organizers. The reigning world champion in the discipline had, moreover, missed his second round.
The FIS taken to task
The five riders still present at the start (Alexander Steen Olsen, Loïc Meillard, Fabio Gstrein, Clément Noël and Manuel Feller) finally set off. Disturbed by this interruption, the lack of light and a degraded route, almost everyone came close to dislodging Marco Schwarz. With the exception of the slalom world vice-champion in 2017, last to pass and ultimately winner with a lead of 23 hundredths.
This is not the first time that the International Ski Federation (FIS) has been attacked by environmental organizations. Alpine skiing is regularly overtaken by environmental realities. Like the weekend of November 11 and 12, when the FIS was forced to cancel the men’s and women’s descents in the Valais resort located at the foot of the Matterhorn, due to heavy snowfall and strong gusts of wind . A month after sending excavators to a glacier in the same resort to prepare the track, partly outside the ski area. Scheduled for Saturday, the start of the first women’s downhill from Zermatt-Cervinia (Austria and Italy) was in turn canceled due to the wind. No decision has yet been made regarding the second race on Sunday.
Despite the numerous cries of alarm to denounce the inaction of the federation – a new petition was sent by the NGO Protect Our Winters after the one signed by more than 500 winter sports athletes at the beginning of the year –, the FIS, however, recognized that it had to “respect Mother Nature”.