Is Ski Racing Viable in a Warming World?

Glaciers shrinking in Europe are no secret, especially to ski racers.

Just eight years ago, U.S. speed skier Sam Morse remembers training on a glacier above Zermatt. When the training session ended, he skied on the glacier all the way down to the cable car’s mid-station and downloaded to town from there. Now, the glacier no longer reaches the mid-station. After a day of training, ski racers have to head back to the summit and download the full length of the cable car.

“In less than 10 years, the glaciers have receded a substantial amount, like probably almost a kilometer or two up the hillside, so you can’t ski out,” he described recently by phone from a training camp in Colorado.

Other U.S. skiers report similar observations. While training in Saas Fe in 2020, Morse’s teammate Erik Arvidsson remembers taking a lift above a bare slope. His coaches told him that they used to be able to train on this slope in July and August.

Earlier this fall, Mikaela Shiffrin adjusted her training plan to stay in South America longer than in previous seasons because training on Europe’s glaciers to prep for the Sölden World Cup is “really mostly rock at this point.”

Couple these observations with last year’s viral photos of excavators digging into Europe’s glaciers to make early-season World Cup race courses, and we have to wonder if ski racing is viable as climate change takes its toll. And worse, is it contributing to the problem?

Perhaps. But Morse and Arvidsson think the sport can lead the way in meaningful change.

First, the Bad News …

A slim minority of U.S. citizens believe that climate change is a hoax. But the facts are hard to deny. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has data showing that the ten warmest years since record-keeping began in 1850 have occurred in the past decade. And NOAA’s climate tools show that the planet will continue to warm rapidly.

In ski country, average daily temperatures in the early season (November) are already over two degrees higher than from 1950-2013—”a fairly significant increase,” said Chris Gloninger, a meteorologist and climate scientist for the Woods Hole Group in Massachusetts.

Interestingly, climatologists now consider December a fall month in New England, when the grass still grows and lawns need mowing. This is a monumental shift, added Gloninger.

Warmer air leads to warmer oceans that are slow to cool, and an ice-free Arctic sets up a wavy Jetstream over the Northern Hemisphere. These deep waves can plunge us into extremes, from a polar vortex to a prominent ridge that brings unseasonably warm temperatures north. The only good news is that warmer air masses can hold more moisture, so when it does snow, it can be a good dump.

But for how long?

NOAA’s climate projection tools predict that if we don’t drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions, average daily temperatures by the end of the century could be eight to 10 degrees (Fahrenheit) warmer than in the mid-20th century.

“The climate in Burlington, for example, will be more like it is in Poughkeepsie, New York, by 2060 and Washington, DC, by 2100,” said Gloninger, using data from Climate Central. This organization communicates climate change science, effects, and solutions to the public.

By 2100, the western ski cities of Denver and Salt Lake City will have climates similar to those in Mexico, though higher elevations in the mountains will remain cooler.

Europe is experiencing similar warming. A study by the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service showed that the Alps’ glaciers have lost 10 percent of their volume in the past two years. It’s no surprise that climatologists predict the end of snow sports as we know them in a generation or two.

FIS’s Efforts

With the future of winter on the line, the International Ski Federation has started to act. Earlier this fall, FIS released its Impact Programme, “a roadmap to a more sustainable and inclusive snow sports ecosystem.” The climate change section of the program lists one strategic objective— to reduce the carbon footprint of FIS activities and events as much as possible, become climate neutral, and support concrete actions to combat or adapt to climate change—along with several promising sub-objectives (e.g., reduce FIS carbon footprint by 50 percent by 2030 and achieve net-zero by 2040).

To achieve these objectives, FIS is taking (or aims to take) several actions to complete 26 by the end of 2024 and release an Impact Report in 2025. One of their first initiatives was to gather data to calculate FIS’s total carbon footprint and estimate the carbon footprint from hosting events. For events, participant travel contributes 88.9 percent of carbon emissions.

Using this data, FIS is now maximizing the use of renewable energy at its headquarters, making every other FIS Congress remote and allowing judges from some disciplines to work at home during races.

FIS is also looking at a modified events calendar to reduce travel—”a balancing act between growing snow sports, by bringing events to as many viable locations as possible, while minimizing the season’s carbon footprint,” FIS said in a statement. For the 2024/2025 season, alpine skiers will only travel to North America once during the regular season—for the Killington, Mont Tremblant, and Beaver Creek World Cups. Sun Valley is hosting the World Cup Finals in March. Still, only 25 men and women qualify to compete in each of alpine ski racing’s four disciplines, reducing by about half the number of people who have to travel back to the U.S. from Europe.

“For  as much as most elite athletes are based in Europe, we are an international sport,” said FIS General Secretary Michel Vion. “If a venue in North America presents ideal conditions at the time when our Finals take place, we would be remiss not to consider it as a strong candidate to host the event.”

FIS is currently working on a plan to start the Alpine World Cup a week later. They also eliminated early-season World Cup downhills in Zermatt—what Arvidsson described as a thorn in both FIS’s and the athletes’ sides. The race was canceled for two consecutive years, and photos of excavators digging into the glacier to build the course were not a good look for ski racing.

“[That race] forced us to be ready to race over a month earlier than normal, which increased the amount of international travel that we had to do leading up to that race, which, from a climate and from a personal standpoint, didn’t really feel necessary,” explained Morse.

To further reduce ski racing’s carbon footprint, FIS has listed several tools and projects to implement as part of the impact program, some more vague than others. Two concrete projects: create a carbon calculator to support local organizing committees and national governing bodies, and create a sustainable car/travel policy for FIS activities. But as Morse pointed out, U.S. alpine skiers are already doing their best to reduce transportation emissions. The team flies commercially, not by private jet like pro athletes in other sports, and once on the ground, the team travels as a group—“packed into vans,” he said, “not in our own sportscars.”

FIS also partners with global organizations, like the World Meteorological Organization, to provide data and expertise about climate change and raise awareness.

Could FIS Do More?

The Impact Programme is a positive step toward reducing ski racing’s carbon emissions. But Arvidsson and Morse likely speak for many ski racers and snow sport athletes who want FIS to do more. Some of their ideas are low-hanging fruit, others more far-reaching.

Shortening the Alpine World Cup season would be one easy way to reduce team travel even more. In its first season (1967), the World Cup tour started in January and ended three months later in March. While the tour still concludes in March, the front end gradually crept into the fall months, first December, then into November. Currently, the season starts in late October with the Sölden giant slaloms.

The early-season World Cups are important for the ski industry, generating excitement and thus increasing equipment and ticket sales. But Arvidsson thinks it’s worth examining the trade-offs. Rather than traveling to the Southern Hemisphere in August and September to prep for the early-season races, skiers could wait to train closer to home later in the fall.

“I recognize that having those early races is important for the business side of things,” Arvidsson acknowledged, “but depending on how important [the business side is] deemed to be, moving the race season to start around Christmas-time would dramatically impact the travel that the national teams would do in the off season.”

Limiting the race season domestically, especially for younger ski racers, would also help reduce the sport’s carbon footprint and the financial burden on parents. This type of change starts from the top.

“One way that FIS could do that is by restricting the [junior] race schedule to be from January to March, and incentivizing clubs and youth programs to take advantage of when they have natural snow available to them within a more reasonable radius in November and December,” said Arvidsson.

“There’s no reason that kids from Vermont who are flying all the way out here to Colorado right now and training here with us need to be doing that,” added Morse.

Policy Changes

But reducing a few hundred ski racers’ airplane flights is a drop in the bucket against the firehose that is climate change. Facing the challenges of a warming world requires dramatic, systemic change on a policy level. And this is where Arvidsson and Morse would like FIS to step up. Ski racing—with its visibility on the global stage and very existence threatened by a lack of snow—could be the face of climate change. As one of the world’s largest sports governing bodies, FIS could unite with the outdoor industry to make a big impact, challenging fossil fuel businesses, and significant greenhouse gas emitters to make dramatic changes to reduce emissions.

“I would say that it’s time to end the finger-pointing and work together with FIS to demand that they become a leader in the climate change conversation,” stated Arvidsson. “The primary skiing and snow sports organization in the world has a responsibility to ensure their future in the next 50 to 100 years. They can form a really strong coalition that can have a dramatic impact on policy levels in Europe, in North America, around the entire world.”