Winter Olympians Warn of Climate Disaster They’ve Seen Firsthand

(Bloomberg) -- Snowboarder Jamie Anderson spent part of the late summer and fall in Switzerland getting ready for the 2022 Winter Olympics. In past sessions in the Alps, the 31-year-old said she might see one piece of ice break off a glacier. This year, she watched them crack and fall in chunks. She noticed more waterfalls than ever as she practiced her spins and grabs.

It’s “a pure, physical testimony to how gnarly climate change is,” said Anderson, a two-time Olympic gold medalist. “You can just see the declining glaciers.”

Many of Team USA’s top athletes said they saw deteriorating conditions up close this summer, as they prepared for the Beijing Olympics in February. Elite skiers and snowboarders typically train on glaciers in the Alps, the Rockies and other high altitudes in the off-season, in addition to regular work off the snow. At a U.S. Olympic team summit Monday, they said rising temperatures are changing their alpine sports.

Skier Alex Hall, now training in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, said that over the past five years, summers have seemed longer, ski seasons have shortened and park crews are struggling to maintain the terrain. “There’s so much melting going on,” he said. “They’re trying their best to keep up the parks up here.”

Snowboarder Maddie Mastro specializes in the halfpipe, which requires a lot of snow to build the ramp, and said the fixtures are increasingly scarce around the world due to the climate conditions.

Biathletes Clare Egan and Susan Dunklee, whose sport combines cross-country skiing and target shooting, said there’s less natural snow than ever at the places they race, replaced by the artificially made version. 

“The venues that we race at can make snow happen and make the race happen for elite athletes,” said Dunklee. “My concern is, as a snow lover, wanting to see snow at the places where a general recreational skier has historically been able to ski.”

Warmer temperatures have hurt alpine areas at all altitudes and around the world. Some previous Winter Olympics cities, like Sochi, in Russia, and Garmisch-Partenkirchen, in Germany, may never again be cold enough to host top-flight alpine sports, according to researchers led by the University of Waterloo in Ontario.

The Beijing Games may test the limits of artificial snow. The outdoor events will be held in the mountains north of the capital, where typical snowfall is only about 7 to 8 inches a year. Making enough snow will require an estimated 49 million gallons of water, and before the bid was approved, the International Olympic Committee expressed concern that “Beijing has overestimated the ability to recapture water for snowmaking.” 

The 2020 Olympics in Tokyo experienced the summer version of climate chaos, when record July temperatures forced organizers to reschedule some daytime events and move the marathons and walking races more than 500 miles north to Sapporo in search of cooler air.

“It’s pretty scary to see it all happen,” Red Gerard, who won a gold medal as a teen at the 2018 Olympics in snowboard slopestyle, said of the conditions in the mountains. “It’s definitely a trip to watch climate change do its thing.”

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