Environmental realities have overtaken the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS). After canceling on Saturday, October 22, the two men's downhill races scheduled for October 29 and 30, the FIS announced on Tuesday, October 25, that it would also cancel the women's races (November 5-6). The reason: "abnormally warm temperatures" and lack of "safety."
This is a setback for the FIS, forced to cancel its new flagship project. At the season opening ceremony in Sölden (Austria) on Friday, October 21, FIS president Johan Eliasch has stressed the importance of this new project, which was set to be spectacular — with a start at an altitude of 3,700 m and a cross-border trail to the foot of the iconic Matterhorn. "After Sölden, nothing happened for a month. We wanted to be able to fill in the gaps in the calendar," he said at the time. "Zermatt is a great opportunity, an important step."
'We need to review the whole project'
But global warming and another scorching summer that worsened the melting of the glaciers — they lost more than 6% of their total volume in Switzerland, a record — thwarted the plans. "We absolutely need to review the dates because we need to have more guarantee," FIS men's race director Markus Waldner admitted on Saturday. "We have to observe the nature. We have this climate change, we had a very extremely warm summer, extremely warm autumn, also. These are signals and we need to respect this."
Urs Lehmann, president of the Swiss federation, reached the same conclusion. He believes that the races should be pushed "two weeks later" in next season's calendar and that he would have liked them to start as early as 2023. But the FIS "put a lot of pressure" for them to be organized this year.
The FIS had already received criticism for its lack of consideration and insight in the matter of environmental issues, notably from skier Johan Clarey. The Olympic downhill medalist had qualified this new race an environmental and logistical "nonsense." "We see that the conditions on the glaciers are getting worse and worse every year, this stage requires enormous means... (...) I don’t understand, it’s not going in the direction in which the FIS should go," he told Agence France-Presse.
The FIS will now have to make sure this faux pas does not happen again, particularly since, according to local Austrian media, the trail in Lech (Austria), where the season is to resume on November 12 and 13, is currently bare, and the high temperatures do not allow the use of snow cannons to create artificial flakes.