Difficult future
Climate crisis, high costs: where are winter sports heading?
Winter sports are facing a difficult future. photo
© Hendrik Schmidt/dpa
Winter sports are facing a difficult future. Climate change and the desire for even more events are driving a development with an open outcome. What’s in store for the athletes?
When there are only a few white spots left on the mountains and on the cross-country ski trails in spring, the winter sports season is coming to an end. Unlike the snow, the debates about the But the future of winter sports will not melt away. Recently, sport and athletes have often taken a backseat to other topics – and these are unlikely to become smaller in the future.
What happens next for winter sports in view of challenges such as climate change, the desire to expand into more exotic regions and the sometimes large increase in prices? What do biathletes, ski racers, bobsledders and luge athletes as well as Nordic skiers have to prepare for?
The climate crisis is getting worse
The images of thin, white ribbons in the otherwise green landscape have long been part of everyday winter sports. “The areas where snow is guaranteed are becoming fewer,” climate researcher Werner Aeschbach from the Institute for Environmental Physics in Heidelberg told the German Press Agency last year: “But there will still be a lot of snow at 2,000 meters. Below 1,000 meters “But this security will no longer exist in the medium term.”
World Cups have been on the brink or been canceled several times in recent months. Events in Germany only took great effort and the snowboard final in Berchtesgaden was canceled. “I am of course worried about the future of our sport,” said France’s biathlon star Julia Simon. The 27-year-old won four gold medals at the World Championships in Nove Mesto in February – and had to contend with temperatures that were far too high and constant rain.
“I think this will be the new normal rather than the exception. We will see a lot more competitions like this in the future,” predicted biathlon sports director Felix Bitterling, given the effects of climate change with less snow and shorter cold periods.
Calendars are getting fuller
Some athletes and officials are calling for a focus on the core months of winter when the chance of snow is greatest. But that would result in a reduction in the size of the World Cup calendar – and probably also less financial income for the international associations. So they want more instead of less. The World Ski and Snowboard Association Fis included a supposedly spectacular descent on the Matterhorn in its program last season. It fell victim to weather conditions in both autumn 2022 and 2023 – a PR disaster.
“It should be divided up so that you ski for four months,” demanded German head coach Christian Schweiger recently, “and not have 13 slaloms and any special runs at an altitude of 4,000 meters in November.”
New markets and events in view
But the Fis definitely wants to create new stimuli, for example in ski jumping. “We’re thinking about a mobile system. We could set it up in the Maracana in Rio and put on a huge show,” said Fis top official Sandro Pertile, causing a stir. Ski jumping on mats in Brazil or in huge indoor halls in Dubai? Whether this will actually happen is questionable.
“We have great options: We can jump on snow. We can jump on mats. We can jump hybrid,” he said. “And so we could go to Brazil and China, where there are a lot of people.” Last season, the World Cup in Wisla, Poland, started on green mats instead of snow for the first time.
Similar opportunities are available in biathlon, where skis have only been swapped for roller skis in summer. It doesn’t have to stay that way forever. In Stockholm this year there was also a biathlon show race with a top-class cast in the middle of the city for the first time, similar to the tradition in the Schalke football arena shortly before the turn of the year.
Financial challenges are increasing
However, the associations keep getting their athletes into trouble with new types of events far away from core Europe. The start of the women’s bobsleigh World Cup in Beijing had to be canceled this winter. Shipping the material is not only time-consuming but also costly. Smaller nations cannot afford that: In the end, only seven women’s sleds were registered for the races on the 2022 Olympic track.
“This is of course an incredible damage to our image,” said German head coach René Spies, who only sent a mini-delegation for the men, including double Olympic champion Francesco Friedrich, to China.