Climate change threat looms large over future of winter sports

GDANSK : Pietro Casartelli started alpine skiing at the age of two with the dream of becoming a professional athlete and racing in the sport's World Cup.

Now 18, the Italian says climate change is making his goals harder and much more expensive to achieve.

Warming weather systems and a shorter season are threatening winter sports and testing the resolve of professionals and amateurs alike.

"If we keep having seasons like this one, we'll have to stop," said Josiane Sempe, owner of a ski rental store in the Hautacam resort, at the border of France and Spain in the Pyrenees. "I think this year is compromised."

Casartelli signed up last year for a training camp in Chile, where the southern hemisphere winter provides snow on the Andes mountains, one of the few destinations available to athletes for training during Europe's hottest months as record heat affects even the continent's highest glaciers.

"We have to make do, even if we can't always train at our best," he told Reuters on his way back from a competition in central Italy.

His trip to Chile was cancelled as too few of the participants could afford it. Simona Novara, spokesperson of the Sestriere Ski Club which Casartelli represents, said the month-long training can cost up to 8,000 euros ($8,700) per athlete.

Climate change is making alpine skiing an elite sport in Europe, as winter training venues are declining in number, while high altitude summer pistes have almost disappeared, Novara said.

An International Biathlon Union (IBU) survey shows that some 60 per cent of athletes in the sport which combines skiing and shooting have felt the impact of climate change, affecting training and competition conditions.

The IBU told Reuters that technical snowmaking capability is a