When Mikaela Shiffrin started skiing again just weeks after her horrific accident last year, the American star became even more aware of the potential dangers of training courses.
Shiffrin's injuries – a puncture wound to her abdomen and severe damage to her abdominal muscles – occurred while competing in giant slalom at the World Cup, but the two-time Olympic champion knew training could be just as risky.
If not more.
“When I came back from injury, I knew about the fence on the side, the hole in the field and where the trees were,” Shiffrin told The Associated Press in a recent interview.
“We often train in environments where there are too many variables to control, and sometimes we have to decide: Is this unreasonably dangerous or is it within a reasonable level of danger and we need to train, we need to practice, and this is the only way we can do it?”
French skier Alexis Pinturault had a similar experience.
“We train in many places where it’s not entirely safe, yes, that’s 100%,” said the 2021 overall men’s world champion.
The ongoing debate over ski safety came into focus again in September, less than five months before the Milan-Cortina Olympics, when World Cup racer Matteo Franzoso died in a crash during pre-season training in Chile.
The 25-year-old Italian broke through two layers of protective barriers on the La Parva circuit and crashed into a wooden fence located six to seven meters outside the track. He died two days later from a traumatic brain injury and resulting brain tumor.
Franzoso became the third young Italian skier to die in less than a year, with a talented French skier killed after a training accident in April.
“Some risks are life-threatening”
Shiffrin, a five-time overall champion and winner of a record 101 World Cup races, dealt with lingering post-traumatic stress disorder when she returned to skiing after her injuries.
Almost three months after the accident, she returned to racing at the end of February.
“Athletes and coaches and everyone else are so used to saying that sports have inherent risks that you start to turn a blind eye to some of the risks that are actually life-threatening,” Shiffrin said.
“It was a challenge for me and I was so afraid of the risk until the end of the season. Thinking about it too much will paralyze you. But it's important that we can assess what those risks are and try to find ways to reduce them as much as possible. It’s not normal to say that risk is part of sport and you either take it or leave it.”
The problem with driving courses is that, for financial reasons, they typically do not have the same safety standards as race tracks.
Smaller teams of workers are of course on the hill to maintain the condition of the snow surface; Fewer safety nets are placed along the course to prevent riders from falling in the event of an accident; and fewer medical personnel and equipment, such as helicopters, for immediate transport to hospital.
Sofia Goggia, the 2018 Olympic downhill champion, called cross-country skiing “an extreme sport. At a high level it’s like F1 or MotoGP in downhill, super-G, but also in giant slalom, because the speed is 80-90 km/h (50-56 mph), there is a risk every time.”
More networks are not a complete solution
According to the Italian, the tracks are safer at races due to the abundance of nets, but she noted that simply increasing the number of nets will not solve the problems on the practice tracks.
If there is overnight snowfall, the safety net should be removed, the slope cleared of fresh snow, and the net put back in place before skiers can descend early in the morning.
While this is an obvious procedure for local organizers and the International Ski and Snowboard Federation on race day, the question is who will take care of this during pre-season camps?
According to Goggia, it would be wrong to point the finger only at team coaches who cannot be held accountable “because the coach just teaches skiing.”
She recalled the day of Francoso's crash in September, when three teams, Austria, Switzerland and Italy, were training on the slope.
“I can't think that they might not have seen the danger,” Goggia said. “But if you want the training slope to be like the World Cup slope, there needs to be a completely different organization. The answer is simple: we can do more. But who will ultimately do it? Who wants to invest millions of euros?
Specialized training courses
Following Franzoso's tragedy, the Italian Winter Sports Federation called on the FIS to set up special training courses both in the southern hemisphere in countries such as Chile, Argentina and New Zealand, as well as in the US and Europe, with safety nets similar to those used for World Cup racing.
Ahead of the World Cup season-opening races in Austria over the weekend, FIS president Johan Elias said the governing body was working to “prevent as many terrible incidents as possible.”
Together with national federations and local organizers, FIS has worked to improve safety, from creating a racing calendar that allows skiers more rest, to increasing the number of medical staff on the ground, from installing more nets to better preparing the snow surface of the slopes.
“We need to make sure that during the speed training sessions the safety standards are exactly the same as on the day of the big competition,” Eliasz said.
However, this may be too ambitious, said Austrian women's national team coach Roland Assinger.
“There will always be risk, but as coaches we try to minimize it,” said Assinger, a former world championship downhill competitor.
“Copper Mountain. [in Colorado] This is the safest training course in the world, with an A-net from top to bottom and countless B-nets. There are also many B-nets in South America, but not at the same level, since investing those millions is financially impossible.”
This summer, before Francoso's death, the Austrian federation began supplying additional security systems to its overseas training camps.
“Was it enough? This was the first step,” said Christian Scherer, Secretary General of Ski Austria. “But we need a coordinated approach from the national federations.”
Scherer added that the responsibility for ensuring safe training cannot be placed on local ski resorts.
Who pays for improved security?
That's the question. Asked by the AP, Elias said that over the past four years the FIS has distributed “almost 100 million” to its member federations “so that they have resources.”
Eliasch added that leading countries such as Austria and Switzerland “have so much money” that they could invest more in the security of training courses.
“For less [federation]this could be a problem. This is where we step in and help,” Elias said.
Austrian speed specialist Vincent Kriechmayr, a former downhill and super-G world champion, hopes that “the big federations will cooperate and coordinate a little better in the regions where all the countries train.”
Assinger called it “definitely a good idea” for FIS to support some facilities where teams can hold training camps during the off-season.
“But what if this happens? We’ll see next summer,” said the Austrian coach. “Until now it was all just talk.”
