Winter Weather Disappears From Winter Olympics And Athletes Worry

LOADING ERROR LOADING Ski racers settling into the start gate for Alpine World Cup events in the Rocky Mountains in early December squinted through sunshine that carried the temperature toward 50 degrees and glanced down at a course covered with pristine — and manufactured — snow. A ski slope at the Beijing Winter Olympics runs on a nearly snowless mountains on Jan. 28. via Associated Press It is a troubling reality and — given their own reliance on the production of snow, continent-hopping flights powered by diesel fuel and other environment-unfriendly offshoots of their careers — hard-to-reconcile push-and-pull for many of those who will be competing in Alpine skiing or freestyle skiing or snowboarding or Nordic combined events or other outdoor sports that helped put the disappearing “Winter” in Winter Games. The Beijing Winter Olympics mascot, Bing Dwen Dwen, and the Olympic rings are painted on the walls of homes in a small village ahead of the 2022 Winter Olympics on Jan. 30. via Associated Press Just one example: In December, Colorado set a record that stood since the 1880s for most consecutive days without snow. “I’m no meteorologist,” Italy’s Marta Bassino, last season’s World Cup giant slalom discipline winner, said with a chuckle, “but I see it with my eyes.” Alexis Pinturault, a three-time Olympic medalist for France, recalls hitting the slopes at Tignes in his country’s Alps 20 years ago, but notes “it’s nearly impossible to ski there anymore.” U.S. aerials skier Winter Vinecki remembers an event in Belarus where, instead of a season-appropriate setting, she competed amid water puddles. Explains Taylor Gold, an American snowboarder who is part of Protect Our Winters, an athlete-driven environmental group: “The absolute ideal scenario would be to have a halfpipe made entirely of natural snow, but that’s just never possible anymore.” A study recently published in “Current Issues in Tourism” projected that without a dramatic reduction of global emissions of greenhouse gases, only one of the previous 21 Winter Olympics sites would be able to reliably provide fair and safe conditions by the end of this century.