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In Cortina d’Ampezzo, the thaw is on. With daytime temperatures reaching double figures in celsius, snow is disappearing from the hillsides and the “torrenti” of ice melt have started to flow once again.
Traditionally a time of year when snowfall can be at its heaviest, there has been none since the Winter Paralympics began. The Games have not been insulated from the consequences.
Last weekend the course at the Cortina snowboard park, about 1,450m above sea level, had to be redesigned the night before competition because it had proved too dangerous in training due to snow melting then refreezing overnight as ice. That did not stop multiple crashes the following day, with the British athlete Davy Zyw one of those to end up in hospital with broken ribs.
In the men’s seated downhill event on Monday, 11 of the 23 starters failed to finish with the conditions generally described as “slush”. In a TikTok post, the US para snowboarder Amy Purdy articulated the thoughts of many athletes: “I don’t believe that the Paralympics should be happening right now,” she said.
The Winter Paralympics have not been staged any earlier than the first half of March this century. It is not the timings that have changed but the climate.
According to the US non-profit Climate Central, the average March temperature in Cortina has risen by 2.5C in the 50 years since the Winter Paralympic Games was first staged.
While the group estimates that 52 out of 93 potential sites for the Winter Olympics would still remain viable by 2050, only 22 out of 93 would be viable in March. The long-predicted squeeze of winter sports by rising global temperatures is happening now and the Paralympics are being hit first.
Asked about the possibility of bringing the event forward in future, into the more reliably cold months of January of February, the IPC said such a shift might not be possible. “We know that climate change is affecting the world, and that’s why we’re organising, committing ourselves and increasing our sustainability efforts. But changing the winter sport calendar is easier said than done”, a spokesperson said.
“If we were to move forward the Olympic Games, the Paralympics would surely follow, but those months are where the winter sport federations have their big competitions, whether it’s World Cup, world championships or others. Some of the media rights holders who broadcast these games to global audiences, they also have big sport events coming to a climax around that period.” (Think the climax of the NFL season).
The sight of snowmaking machines standing upright on the slopes is a modern fact of life in winter sport and athletes and organisers alike have commended the course preparation here. Ironically, the manufacturing of snow at Milano Cortina has been less than predicted, due to the large falls that came before and during the Olympics. That still meant 1.8m cubic metres of snow was required over the course of both events, compared with the 2.4m predicted.
With the weather staying well above freezing for the remainder of the Paralympics, and a forecast of rain coming for the closing weekend, that total will almost certainly rise yet.
