Divide the season into blocks: Norway wants to revolutionize the World Ski Championships

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The 2023/24 Ski World Cup season has been over since mid-March. Although the FIS has not yet published the racing calendar for next season, it can be assumed that the skiing stars will start the World Cup season as usual in Sölden at the end of October. Or maybe not?

The Norwegian ski association “Skiforbundet” has developed a concept together with accounting firm KPMG under the motto “Change the Course” to make the Ski World Cup more sustainable and thus safeguard the future of skiing. The racing calendar in particular would fundamentally change.

Start of the season in the US

The Norwegians want to divide the season into four individual blocks based on geographical areas. Because athletes traditionally prepare for the new season in South America in the autumn, the World Championships would start in the US at the end of November. In this way, the overseas training camps could be combined with the races there and a new, later trip across the Atlantic Ocean could be avoided. This significantly reduces emissions from travel.

This will be followed by races in Europe, which are again divided into individual geographical blocks, taking into account the snow conditions in the different areas. For example, we go to Scandinavia in mid-March because the natural snow conditions there are usually still good even towards the end of the season.

However, the Norwegian association leaves the location for the season finale open. This is expected to take place in early April 2025 in “areas of suitable conditions” and the location should change annually.

Emissions must be reduced

When planning the races, particular attention was paid to the geographical conditions of the respective locations. According to the ski association, the proposed calendar is designed to ensure that weather and natural snow conditions at the planned locations are as favorable as possible.

“Emissions could be reduced in this way because the overall need for artificial snow is reduced. Organizers could avoid dates with poor conditions and hold competitions when snow conditions are more reliable,” the concept said. This means that cancellations due to poor snow conditions could become a thing of the past in the future, which would in turn increase interest in alpine skiing .

Sustainability is central

The geographic racing blocks are intended to further reduce the need for air travel and promote the use of more sustainable modes of transportation. “This calendar allowed teams to travel to an area and stay there for several weeks and travel from one game to another by car, bus or train instead of by plane,” the concept says.

The model presented by Norway mainly aims to reduce emissions to make ski racing possible in the coming decades. According to calculations, these could be reduced by 14 percent for women in the Norwegian team and by as much as 29 percent for men.

Source : Blick