Instead, the weather has been perfectly clear, sunny and, yes - cold. But starting next week when a warm front is slated to move in over the posh towns of Courchevel and Meribel, temperatures are expected to soar well above freezing and start melting the perfectly shaped racing surfaces that organizers have prepared with mostly artificial snow.
“There’s a very real threat to what we know and love from winter,” American skiing standout Mikaela Shiffrin said. “We get really caught up in our world and the medals and wins and victories and records and everything. But what we hope is to be able to enjoy skiing and winter sports and winter recreation for many, many years to come. And that’s under threat right now.
Both weekends of racing in Zermatt-Cervinia were wiped out because of a lack of snow. As were the following weekend’s races in Lech-Zuers, Austria.But the cancellations kept coming amid a dramatically snow-less winter across Europe: A low-altitude race in Zagreb, Croatia, melted away; and even races slated for January in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany - the Bavarian resort that hosted the 1936 Olympics - had to be moved.
“You see glaciers receding and in really bad shape if you have a low-snow year or tremendously warm temperatures in the summer,” Kristofic added. “A lot of times now we’re seeing less snow in South America , really warm winters over here, or extreme conditions where it will be warm and then it will snow two feet and then you have a big mess as well.”
So far, the FIS has been taking baby steps. There are no longer city events held on artificial tracks built on giant scaffolding or inside ski jumping facilities in places like Munich, Stockholm and Oslo. The annual women’s races scheduled for Maribor, Slovenia - finish altitude a mere 340 meters - were moved to Slovenian resort Kranjska Gora before this season after three straight years when the race made the same move mid-season because of a lack of snow.