Canadian freestyle skier Philippe Marquis has all the time felt most at dwelling within the mountains, his playground a postcard of snow-capped magnificence.
However the two-time Olympian has watched the place he loves most change over his time within the sport, all due to a warming local weather. Lower than a decade in the past, he would prepare into the summer time months on Horstman Glacier in Whistler. No extra. The glacier was closed to summer time snowboarding and snowboarding final 12 months resulting from an absence of snow.
Now a coach with Freestyle Snowboarding Canada’s NextGen program in moguls, Marquis mentioned athletes have been compelled to depend on man-made snow, which is more durable and icier than pure powder and may be robust on athletes’ our bodies. Schedules have been thrown in a blender by weather-related adjustments, and with that, Marquis mentioned the fee to compete has elevated.
“Seeing the adjustments around the globe is one thing that I am very terrified of, and it is one thing that’s actually affecting me and the game I dearly love,” Marquis, who chairs the Canadian Olympic Committee’s athletes’ fee, mentioned in an interview with CBC Sports activities.
He is one in every of greater than 400 athletes the world over who’ve signed a letter to the candidates vying to turn into the brand new Worldwide Olympic Committee (IOC) president, urging them to make local weather their number-one precedence.
IOC members from the world over will collect in Greece subsequent week for the IOC Session, the place they are going to elect a brand new president amongst seven candidates. The candidates made their case privately to members at a closed-door event in Switzerland in January, with solely quarter-hour every to put out their imaginative and prescient.
Some have emphasised the local weather greater than others of their public platforms: Johan Eliasch, president of the Worldwide Ski Federation, described local weather change as an “existential menace” to the Winter Olympics and has pitched rotating these Video games between everlasting venues as a extra a sustainable choice.
In the meantime, World Athletics president Sebastian Coe, one of many entrance runners, references the problem of local weather change in his platform and vows to “embed bold environmental objectives into each side of the Video games, setting new requirements for sustainability and inexperienced innovation in sport,” however would not elaborate on these objectives or how he’ll obtain them. Coe has said climate change may eventually force the Summer season Olympics to the winter calendar.
The winner will exchange Thomas Bach, who has ruled the most important sporting group on the earth since 2013, and can formally take over in June.
That particular person will likely be tasked with guiding the Olympic Video games by a post-pandemic world, navigating challenges starting from battle and political instability to sport integrity and athlete security.
They’re going to even be tasked with preserving the Video games related amongst a youthful technology that consumes media in a vastly completely different approach than their dad and mom and grandparents did.
“[We need] a frontrunner who understands and embodies the constructive values of sport, stands up for integrity, good governance, and sustainability, monetary and environmental, whereas advancing a secure and inclusive sporting surroundings worldwide,” Canadian Olympic Committee president Tricia Smith, who’s an IOC member eligible to solid a vote within the election, mentioned in a written assertion to CBC Sports activities.
‘Now not a distant menace’
However no problem could also be larger than a warming planet and the intense climate that comes with it, the athletes who signed the letter to IOC candidates argue. Excessive warmth makes it harder to plan the Summer season Video games, whereas fewer locations are capable of host the Winter Video games, resulting from an absence of snow and melting ice.
“That is now not a distant menace, however a present and rising hurt to the sports activities we love and to the nations that make up our Olympic household,” the letter says.
The athletes are calling for a gathering with the brand new president, and for that particular person to strengthen the IOC’s commitments to “swiftly minimize carbon emissions.” In addition they name for the IOC to “set a regular” relating to “high-polluting sponsorships.”
The letter contains signatures from greater than 125 Olympic flag bearers and greater than 20 Canadians.
That features athletes who gained medals in Paris final 12 months, similar to paddler Katie Vincent, volleyball participant Melissa Humana-Paredes, tennis participant Gabriela Dabrowski and weightlifter Maude Charron, who was one in every of Canada’s flag bearers on the Paris 2024 opening ceremonies.
A few month in the past, Vincent went to a coaching camp simply exterior San Diego. Her group was compelled to search out some place else to coach for just a few days when an algae bloom closed the lake they had been supposed to make use of.
“They imagine it was due to the chemical compounds that entered the soil due to the combating of the [Los Angeles] fires that trickled by the soil and ended up infecting the lake,” mentioned Vincent, who turned an Olympic champion in dash canoe final summer time in Paris.
The three-time Olympic medallist additionally skilled warming temperatures all through her profession, maybe most notable through the excessive warmth of the Olympics in Tokyo. It was a number of the hottest climate athletes had managed, Vincent mentioned.
Wildfire threat in focus for LA 2028
The IOC has vowed to chop its direct and oblique carbon emissions by 50 per cent by 2030, aligning with the Paris Settlement on local weather change.
In Paris, organizers opted to concentrate on short-term or present infrastructure to keep away from producing emissions that include constructing new services. Organizers mentioned the 2024 Summer season Video games diminished the carbon footprint of the video games by greater than 54 per cent in comparison with the common in London in 2012 and Rio in 2016.
However Los Angeles is within the highlight in 2028, and wildfire threat on everybody’s thoughts after the toll of final fall’s devastating blazes, which killed practically 30 individuals and destroyed 1000’s of houses and different constructions.
Vincent mentioned it is a reminder of the duty to ensure they shield the surroundings, which is why she desires to ensure it is on the high of the IOC’s precedence record.
“It felt like the appropriate time so as to add my title to that record and assist proceed this dialog with the IOC.”
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