FIS Autumn Meetings to get underway in Zurich on 1st October

Summer time has officially ended and once again it’s that time of the year when Zurich meetings are approaching and winter is just around the corner.  The official FIS Autumn Meetings will take place at the Hilton Hotel in Zurich next week, from the 1st to the 5th of October. The National Ski Associations, World Cup Organisers and FIS officials will come together to discuss the main topics of the upcoming season.

As far as the  World Cup is concerned, there are few changes and one of these is the harmonization of the individual parallel event rules. The new Parallel (PAR) - formerly known as City Event or Team Event - has been revised in an effort to produce a format that is fair for athletes and interesting for fans, television and sponsors at the same time. The format will feature the qualification run for the best 30 competitors according to the actual Parallel World Seeding List (PWSL). The proposed qualification format includes three different options: one run only in a different course from the parallel competition course, one run only in a parallel format and run and re-run in parallel format also. In case of force majeure, the Jury will be able to apply any of the three formats described above.
The first 16 ranked athletes from the qualifications will access to the round of sixteen. All heats will have a “run and re-run” format to ensure fairness and integrity. The new Parallel event will take place in St.Moritz, Sestriere and Are (replacing Stockholm’s PAR) on the women’s side and Alta Badia and Chamonix on the men’s side, as well as during the finals in Cortina for both tours.

Another anticipated topic is the implementation of the alpine combined with contribution on the enlargement of the calendars. The discipline itself will take place in Val D’Isere, Zauchensee, Crans Montana and La Thuile for the women’s and Bormio, Wengen and Hinterstoder for the men’s. Other than this, there is a proposal to start the second run in the order of the time achieved in the 1st run.

Furthermore, the organiser of the 2022-23 World Cup Finals will be elected in Zurich. Soldeu (AND), Lenzerheide (SUI) and Kvitfjell/Hafjell (NOR) are the three candidates.

Finally, the FIS Race Directors will also summarise the main outcomes of their summer inspections and discuss the competition calendars for the coming seasons.  The discussions promise to be interesting and the anticipation for the upcoming winter season is getting bigger and bigger.