When Mikaela Shiffrin started skiing again weeks after her terrifying crash last year, the American star was even more alert to the potential dangers of training courses.<\/p>\n
Shiffrin\u2019s injuries \u2013 a puncture wound to her abdomen and severe damage to her abdominal muscles \u2013 came in a World Cup giant slalom race. But the two-time Olympic champion knew that training could be just as risky.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n If not more.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I came back from injury, I was aware of the fencing on the side and a hole in the course and where the trees were,\u201d Shiffrin said in a recent interview.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are often training in conditions where the variables are just too many to control and you have to decide sometimes: Is this unreasonably dangerous, or is this within a reasonable level of danger that we need to train, we need to practice, and this is the only way we can do it?\u201d<\/p>\n French skier Alexis Pinturault had similar experiences.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are training in many places where it\u2019s not really safe, yes, that\u2019s 100 percent sure,\u201d the 2021 men\u2019s overall World Cup champion said.<\/p>\n Ongoing safety discussions in Alpine skiing came into fresh focus in September \u2013 less than five months before the Olympics in Milan Cortina, Italy \u2013 when World Cup racer Matteo Franzoso died following a crash in preseason training in Chile.<\/p>\n The 25-year-old Italian crashed through two layers of safety fencing on a course at La Parva and slammed into a wooden fence positioned 6-7m (20-23ft) outside the course. He died two days later from cranial trauma and a consequent swelling of his brain.<\/p>\n Franzoso was the third young Italian skier to die in less than a year, and a talented French skier died following a training crash in April.<\/p>\n Shiffrin, a five-time overall champion and winner of a record 101 World Cup races, dealt with lingering post-traumatic stress disorder when she got back on skis again after her injuries.<\/p>\n Nearly three months after her crash, she returned to racing in late February.<\/p>\n \u201cAthletes and coaches and everybody are so used to saying that the sport carries an inherent risk that you start to become blind to some of the risks that are actually life-threatening,\u201d Shiffrin said.<\/p>\n \u201cThis was a challenge for me, that I felt so scared of the risk for the rest of the season. If you think too much about it, you become paralysed. But it\u2019s really important that we can assess what those risks are and try to find ways to mitigate that as much as possible. It\u2019s not OK to say risk is part of the sport and you take it or leave it.\u201d<\/p>\n The issue with training courses is that, for financial reasons, they usually lack the same safety standards that apply to race courses.<\/p>\n Smaller crews of course workers are on the hill to maintain the condition of the snow surface; less safety netting is placed along the course to break the fall when racers crash; and fewer medical staff and equipment, like helicopters for immediate transport to a hospital, are available.<\/p>\n Sofia Goggia, the 2018 Olympic downhill champion from Italy, called ski racing \u201can extreme sport\u201d and said \u201cat a high level, it\u2019s like F1 or MotoGP in downhill, super-G, but also giant slalom; because the speed is 80-90km\/h [50-56mph], the risk is there every time.\u201d<\/p>\n In races, courses are safer thanks to an abundance of nets, according to Goggia. But she pointed out that just having more nets won\u2019t solve the issues on training courses.<\/p>\n When there is overnight snowfall, safety netting should be removed, the slope cleaned from the fresh snow, and the netting put back before skiers can charge downhill in the early morning hours.<\/p>\n While this is an obvious procedure for local organisers and the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) on a race day, the question is who takes care of it during a preseason training camp.<\/p>\n For Goggia, it would be wrong to point the finger at just the team coaches, who cannot be held responsible \u201cbecause a coach just teaches you how to ski\u201d.<\/p>\n She recalled the day of Franzoso\u2019s crash in September, when there were three teams training on that slope: Austria, Switzerland and Italy.<\/p>\n \u201cI cannot think that they didn\u2019t see the danger, maybe,\u201d Goggia said. \u201cBut if you want to ensure the training slope as a World Cup slope, there has to be a totally different organisation. The answer is easy: We can do more. But who does it in the end? Who wants to invest millions of euros?\u201d<\/p>\n After the Franzoso tragedy, the Italian Winter Sports Federation called on FIS to establish dedicated training courses, both in the Southern Hemisphere in countries like Chile, Argentina and New Zealand, as well as in the US and Europe, with safety netting just like courses used for World Cup races.<\/p>\n On the fringe of the World Cup season-opening races in Austria last weekend, FIS President Johan Eliasch said the governing body was working to \u201cprevent as much as possible horrible accidents to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n Together with national federations and local organisers, FIS was looking into improving safety, from scheduling a race calendar that allows skiers to take more rest to having more medical staff on the ground, and from placing more netting to better preparing the snow surface of courses.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to make sure that when you have training runs in speed that the safety standards are exactly the same as on the big race day,\u201d Eliasch said.<\/p>\n However, that might be too ambitious, Austria women\u2019s team coach Roland Assinger said.<\/p>\n \u201cA risk will always remain, but we coaches try to minimise it,\u201d said Assinger, a former World Cup downhiller.<\/p>\n \u201cCopper Mountain [in Colorado in the US] is the safest training course in the world, with A netting from top to bottom and countless B nets. In South America, they also have a lot of B nets, but not at the same level, as it\u2019s financially not doable to invest those millions.\u201d<\/p>\n The Austrian federation started this summer, even before Franzoso\u2019s death, to ship additional safety netting to their overseas training camps.<\/p>\n \u201cWas it enough? It was a first step,\u201d said Christian Scherer, secretary general of Ski Austria. \u201cBut we need a coordinated approach from the national federations.\u201d<\/p>\n Scherer added that the responsibility for safer training courses cannot be left to the local ski resorts.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the question. Eliasch says FIS distributed \u201cnearly 100 million [euros, $117bn]\u201d over the past four years to its member federations \u201cso they have the resources\u201d.<\/p>\n Eliasch added that the leading nations such as Austria and Switzerland \u201chave so much money\u201d that they could invest more in the safety of training courses.<\/p>\n \u201cFor a smaller [federation], this can be a challenge. Here we do step in and help,\u201d Eliasch said.<\/p>\n Austrian speed specialist Vincent Kriechmayr, a former world champion in downhill and super-G, hoped \u201cthat the big federations cooperate and coordinate a little bit better in regions where all nations train\u201d.<\/p>\n Assinger called it \u201ccertainly a good idea\u201d for FIS to support some venues that accommodate teams for off-season training camps.<\/p>\n \u201cBut if it happens? I will see next summer,\u201d the Austrian coach said. \u201cSo far, it has only been talking.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When Mikaela Shiffrin started skiing again weeks after her terrifying crash last year, the American star was even more alert to the potential dangers of training courses. Shiffrin\u2019s injuries \u2013 a puncture wound to her abdomen and severe damage to her abdominal muscles \u2013 came in a World Cup giant slalom race. But the two-time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":373,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us-canada-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
Are the risks life-threatening in skiing?<\/h2>\n
![\"Austria's](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/AP25299360781880-1761666751.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C514&quality=80\")
Are more nets the solution for teams ahead of the Winter Olympics?<\/h2>\n
Will dedicated training courses solve skiing safety issues?<\/h2>\n
Who pays for the winter sports safety upgrades \u2013 Olympics, FIS?<\/h2>\n
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