J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by J2SkiNews

Just an update on main story - increasing number of areas today confirming they do plan to open next week, all being well. Dolomiti Superski (except South Tyrol part) from Monday, Madonna di Campiglio region from Wednesday, Milky Way (Via Lattea) from a week Saturday etc

flat country skier wrote:Yes, the Championships have finally got away after a few days of bad weather. Eurosport UK has decided not to show any of it live on TV, although scheduled, they are showing (sticking with, a commentator's words, not mine)) tennis on both channels and saying if you want to watch buy a Eurosport app and watch there! Really not happy at all :(

We are findinG Eurosport a bit of a nightmare these days. We had it on sky for years but the price kept creeping up for the package to £45 a month (£540) a year and we were only really paying to watch skiing so we eventually escaped Sky and went for the "watch it on the app" offer which we saw as low as £19.99 a year. But then we found both our nice Samsung Smart TVs (4 and 6 years old) had old version of Eurosport apps which apparently couldn't be updated so back to square one other than watching on iPad or some small screen. Then Amazon Prime said could get it through them at an £8 a month add-on so we've gone for that. The layout is a colossal mess and you can't record the broadcasts and they don't bother adding events to the library until 24 hours after they've happened. So we can't record today's races, which we can't watch live as we're working, and wont be able to see until tomorrow evening, by which time we know the result. Hmmm...

It has been announced that the final parts of the dissected 2021 World Freestyle Skiing and Snowboarding Championships are to take place in Aspen next month. The event is now spread across four resorts and countries on three continents over five weeks. Most sections have moved location three times in most cases across two or three continents, over the past two months, due to the pandemic.

The entire event had originally been due to be staged in China at the upcoming 2022 Olympic Venue of Zhangjiakou, but it was announced at the start of December that a new location outside of China would be announced due to the pandemic. Calgary in Canada was originally selected as a replacement of China to host the halfpipe, big air and slopestyle events but they pulled out on 20 January 2021.

Since then the ski and snowboard cross events were moved to Idre in Sweden from 11 to 13 February 2021, the parallel and giant slalom snowboard in Rogla in Slovenia from 1 to 2 March 2021, moguls and aerials held in Almaty Kazakhstan from 8 to 11 March 2021 and it has now been announced that slopestyle, halfpipe and big air events of both Snowboard and Freeski will take place in Aspen from 10 to 16 March 2021.

Around the same time regular World Cup races that were due to be staged in North America at resorts including Beaver Creek, Lake Louise and Killington were moved for the same reason.

Aspen is the regular host of the Winter X Games which it staged for the 20th time at the end of last month.

Aspen has had high numbers of coronavirus cases in the past month being placed in the regions 'red zone' in January under the tiering system there, posting more than 3,000 cases per 100,000 people. However after restaurants were closed numbers have since more than halved and the area has been moved down to the orange tier.

The World Freestyle Skiing and Snowboarding Championships are staged every two years, the last ones at 2019 in Park City, Utah.

Italy's Aprica ski resort is to unveil what they believe is the longest floodlit run for night skiing in Europe, at 6km (3.75 miles) in length, when Italian resorts are hopefully allowed to re-open next week.

The resort's lift company had the lighting on the Superpanoramica, a blue piste descending from 1,972m that offers fantastic panorama views in the daylight hence its name. The lighting was installed last year but the run has not yet been able to open due to lockdowns.

The lift company has now announced a further €3m spend on an upgrade to the Magnolta chairlift on the Piana dei Galli which will be upgraded from a double chairlift to a quad and see its length extended from around 1,000 metres the 1200 metres.

The new lift will increase capacity on the route from 1,200 to 2,000 skiers per hour and the project also includes new ski school slopes.

Sonofapreacher wrote:How many Brit skiers are there yearly?

Hard to know really. Ski Clubs's 2019 report reckoned 50% of British skiers have skied Italy at some point, 25% in past 3 years and 13% in 18-19 season. So 13% of what? Some reports claim there are currently 750,000 active British skiers, others as many as 6 million (maybe that's "have ever been skiing"?).

Some people thought they wouldn't happen - including, at one point, the organisers - but the 2021 Alpine Skiing World Championships get underway in 48 hours' time with the opening ceremony at 6pm local time on Sunday 7th February, in Cortina d'Ampezzo.

The World Championships, staged every two years, and are the second biggest event in ski racing after the winter Olympics. Cortina seemed to have pulled off quite a feat a few years ago when it managed to land the 2020 World Cup Finals - the annual culmination of the World Cup season, this year's championships and in 2026 the first Olympics in 20 years in Western Europe.

Then came COVID, the Finals were cancelled and last year the organisers asked the FIS for a postponement to these Championships, but were persuaded to carry on and stage the competition behind closed doors.

Nonetheless lots of people will be in Cortina for the events and a whole host of stats have been published:

They are among 3,500 people in total involved in staging the event, including volunteers, members of the Federations and 550 accredited media.

600 athletes from 70 nations will be competing for 39 medals in 13 races.

Although there'll be no fans in resort a global TV audience of 500 million people are expected to tune in with 140 cameras installed for the TV production of the event, 90 of which to work simultaneously.

With the start of Championship competitions on Monday, 450 people are currently working to prepare the five race tracks with the help of 20 snow groomers, 25 quads, 100 drills and 500 shovels. Over 21 km of A and B nets are used to secure the slopes as well as 2,000 poles and 130 protection mattresses.

Events will be shown on Eurosport and there's a free Championships App that can be downloaded.

Here's the promotional video...

flat country skier wrote:
On a positive side there will be 2 weeks of Alpine skiing from Cortina on Eurosport from 8 February ...to make us all to miss snow and skiing :)

I love this if it helps to get everyone in the mood:

Most Italian ski areas will be allowed to re-open their ski lifts from Monday 15th February, it currently appears.

The date has been in the calendar for some time but previous dates have come and gone without any real hope resorts would re-open. This time it currently looks more promising for most areas.

The Italian government's Technical Scientific Committee has ruled ski areas in "yellow zones" under the country's new tiered lockdown rules, can open from the 15th. Current yellow and orange zones are highlighted in the map above.

Normal pandemic operating procedures for ski areas the world over are to be in place including mask-wearing, social-distancing and the promotion of online ticket sales.

They rejected a proposal from the regions concerned to allow ski areas in orange zones to re-open with a 50% capacity reduction on lifts and the mandatory use of Ffp2 masks.

It is also currently unclear if Italians will be able to travel from a higher risk zone into a yellow zone to ski.

If Italy's ski lifts do start turning again it will leave only France of the 'big four' Alpine ski nations where the lifts remain out of action.

The opening of Italy's ski lifts is not the same as the resumption of ski tourism, particularly international ski tourism.