Calendar changes to the Audi FIS Ski Cross World Cup 2020/21

After the originally planned calendar for the Audi FIS Ski Cross World Cup season 2020/21 had been approved by the FIS Council at the beginning of October, the development of the Covid-19 pandemic and the national measures implemented in the hosting countries forced organizers together with FIS to apply some changes to it.

However, after some very intense weeks of negotiations and rescheduling, we are happy to announce the adapted calendar, which has been approved by all stakeholders involved.

Changes to the December schedule

The December Tour will now kick-off with the double Cross event in Montafon, Austria. The venue will as World Cup opener host ski and snowboard cross competitions on Dec 11 and Dec 12 respectively.

That way the Ski and Snowboard Cross World Cup Tours will commence together, then, in the course of their respective tours, they will share Feldberg (GER) as another common venue in January, but will have their competitions on two following weekends.
And the grand final of both tours will once again be held in Switzerland’s Veysonnaz on the weekend of March 20-21.

For the ski cross circuit, after Montafon, the tour will lead to Arosa in Switzerland, where another night-time short course event was added to the calendar. So, now it will be back-to-back action in the Swiss resort for the very first time happening under the floodlights of Arosa.

The last stop for ski cross athletes before Christmas will be in the French Alps, in Val Thorens. The originally scheduled back-to-back races from beginning of December were postponed to Dec 19-20.

“We are very happy that all organizers were so cooperative and were willing to put this adapted calendar together. With these challenging times, it seems we need to be more flexible than ever. It is great to have such awesome partners on board who are as motivated as we are,” FIS Cross Race Director Klaus Waldner said referring to himself and the rest of his competition team.

“The Idre Fjäll TRE”

Also, very positive news from the northern part of Europe reached the ski cross competition management.

The Local Organizing Committee of Idre Fjäll (SWE), together with the Swedish Ski Federation, FIS and all stakeholders involved decided to add one more race to the existing back-to-back competitions at the Swedish venue.

But not just any kind of race. It will be a special 600m sprint format on the finish straight of the course and it will take place on Wednesday, January 20, 2021 at 13:00 CET.
The originally confirmed full-length back-to-back races will be going down as planned on the following weekend, January 23 and 24.

To mark this special event week, it will carry the name Audi FIS Ski Cross World Cup – The Idre Fjäll TRE. “Tre” means three in Swedish and underlines the unique Swedish ski cross triple.

“We are very happy that the Idre Fjäll resort, the organizers and the Swedish Ski Federation agreed to this triple event. It is something new and different for sure. With the sprint event ahead of the back-to-back race weekend, the anticipation to race the whole course will for sure be high. We want to thank Idre Fjäll and all stakeholders for their support and to make this special happening possible and can’t wait for the triple-action in January,” Klaus Waldner, FIS Cross Race Director says.

2015/16 was the first season that Idre Fjäll hosted Audi FIS Ski Cross World Cup competitions and the Swedes stepped up in a big way, introducing a truly unique course set-up that lead to some of the most thrilling action seen on tour over the past years.

We are looking forward to the premiere of the “The Idre Fjäll Tre”, which will also be the first stop in the new year after the Christmas break!

Rest of the season

The rest of the originally scheduled calendar will remain the same with back-to-back races in Feldberg, Germany, on January 30-31, followed by a World Cup premiere in Bakuriani (GEO) on Feb 6-7 – not only because the Georgian venue will host a Ski Cross World Cup for the first time, but also because the first ever Ski Cross Team Event will be held there. We can’t wait to see this new format hitting the course!

Then, the Zhangjiakou 2021, FIS Freestyle Ski, Snowboard & Freeski World Championships will take place from 18th to 28th February 2021, at two of the official competition venues of the 2022 Beijing Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games: Genting Secret Garden at Chongli District, Zhangjiakou City, of Hebei Province and Shougang Industrial Park in Beijing. It serves as the official test event in both Cross disciplines for the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games. The ski cross competition is slated to go down on February 19, 2021.

Back in World Cup business, there will be one more stop before the finals, which will be in Russia’s Sunny Valley resort, where competitions will be held on March 13.

As mentioned above, the World Cup finals will be staged in Veysonnaz (SUI) on March 20-21 together with the Snowboard Cross circuit.

Now that all additional and new dates have been approved, we can’t wait until the new season finally kicks-off in about four weeks from now!

You can find the new, fully adapted Audi FIS Ski Cross World Cup calendar HERE.