Updates from the Spring 2022 Alpine Committee Online Meeting

On Friday 13th May, the members of the Alpine committee gathered together in an online meeting to discuss the main points in preparation for the next season.

Some important topics were discussed and the calendars for the following season were presented.

2022/2023 Calendar

Calendars for the season 2022/23 were presented during the sub-committee meeting with a total number of 40 women’s World Cup races and 42 for the men’s.

The highlight of the upcoming season will be the World Championships in Courchevel-Méribel from February 6th to 19th. The programme, as has already been the case for the past World Championships in Cortina d’Ampezzo, will be packed, i.e. with 13 races in 14 days, and will follow the same schedule as the previous 2021 World Championships, starting with the speed disciplines.

The French World Championships programme includes two different venues, Meribel will host the women's races while Courchevel will host the men's.

Sölden, Austria, is scheduled to welcome the opening of the 2022/23 Audi FIS World Cup by hosting both the Women’s and Men’s Giant Slalom on the 22nd and 23rd of October.

One of the great new features of the coming season will be the Zermatt/Cervinia races, which will inaugurate the speed season with four downhill races.  The men’s tour will open this new exciting race that starts in Switzerland and ends in Italy on Saturday and Sunday 29th-30th of October followed by the women’s tour on the 5th and 6th of November.

The North American tour is extended and in addition to the traditional races in Lake Louise (CAN), Beaver Creek (USA) and Killington (USA), the World Cup will return to Palisaded Tahoe (USA) and Aspen (USA) with the men's tour after the World Championships.

For the first time in 20 years, the Women's World Cup returns to Kviffjell (NOR) with speed races that will complete the Scandinavian tour together with Are (SWE) races after the World Championships.

As the last stop of the season, there will be the World Cup Finals in Soldeu (AND) from the 13th to the 19th of March.

Alpine Working Group

Over the past year, a specific working group was created to develop new concepts and initiatives with the aim of making Alpine Skiing more attractive.

The recommendations that the working group presented to develop the concept focus on a few main ideas: more weekly night competitions, revisiting the format of the Alpine Combined, considering the calendar timing of the World Championships to benefit the last part of the World Cup programme, promoting the Continental Cup and indoor races in the summer to extend the season.

Starting order during the speed events

As decided in the meetings in May 2022, a working group was established to form one proposal for a new starting order during the speed events. The working group was made up of representatives from Austria, Germany, Italy and Switzerland with the aim of making it fairer while creating a TV-friendly product. Through a questionnaire, which was sent to a variety of stakeholders, the working group was to gather a better understanding of the interest in the proposal and further understand the different interested groups

The conclusion of this path is as follows:

Top 10 athletes, draw bib 6 to 15

Top 11-20, draw bib 1-5 and 11-20

Top 21-30, draw bib 21 to 30

Parallel Penalty Time

It was proposed to change the penalty time in Parallel competitions from 0.50 to 0.75. The penalty time intention is to handicap a competitor that has made an error in the first heat to permit a head-to-head match in the second run of the heat, but the penalty time has to be large enough that it can be overcome only by exceptional performance or an error by the non-penalized competitor.

The calendars and all other proposals are subject to the approval of the FIS Council.