As the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina come to a close, athletes are using their platforms to raise awareness of key global issues affecting a warming planet.
What happened?
According to the Associated Press, U.S. skiers Lindsey Vonn and Mikaela Shiffrin and Italian skier Federica Brignone all spoke about the rapid melting of glaciers in the Alps and other mountain ranges around the world.
“Most of the glaciers I used to ski on are pretty much gone,” Vonn, 41, said at a pre-race press conference in Cortina on February 3, according to the Associated Press. “So it’s very real and very obvious to us.”
These Olympics highlight a current problem: Cortina is a town historically surrounded by glacier-covered mountains that are visible from the city. However, during this year’s Olympics, glaciers on most mountain ranges shrank significantly compared to previous years.
Another athlete, Team USA skier AJ Hurt, also expressed concerns about the start of the season in Solden, Austria, in October.
“Every year, I feel like we come in with a little less snow. Every time we think, do we really want to start in October? There’s no snow here,” Hurt told The Associated Press. “It’s really sad and it’s hard to ignore in this sport, certainly when we look at it so often it’s so clear.”
Why does the loss of glaciers matter?
For Olympic fans, the loss of glaciers has immediate consequences: As temperatures warm, glaciers melt faster, leaving less snow available for sports like skiing and snowboarding, while outdoor ice sports like bobsleigh, luge and skeleton sledding become increasingly difficult to host because of a lack of freezing temperatures to set up tracks.
According to a report by the World Economic Forum, only 10 countries will be able to host the Winter Olympics and Paralympics by 2050 due to reduced snowfall and warming temperatures.
But the impact of melting glaciers isn’t limited to sports. Melting glaciers can cause landslides and avalanches, causing death and destruction. It could lead to widespread flooding and long-term environmental problems, and the lack of glaciers could further exacerbate the lack of rain and snow because less water returns to the water table to produce precipitation, creating a feedback loop that compounds the problem.
Excessive ice melt also causes sea levels to rise, endangering coastal communities and increasing the spread of disease while reducing seafood stocks.
What is being done about glacier loss?
The University of Innsbruck in Austria created the Goodbye Glacier Project to help educate the public about the risks of disappearing glaciers. Meanwhile, ski resorts and towns have developed the Mountain Towns 2030 plan to push for climate-friendly legislation to help protect themselves from further melting of glaciers.
But, as American skier River Radamus points out, winter athletes are among the first to witness the consequences of a warming planet.
“We have always believed that unless we do the right things, we are on a dangerous trend,” Radames said, according to the Associated Press.
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