After Schedule Change, Freeride World Tour Faces Another Cancellation
The Freeride World Tour competition in Küthai-Innsbruck, Austria, has been cancelled because the current conditions didn’t meet the organizers’ standards for safety and a fair competition.
The event was a rescheduled version of another competition that was supposed to happen in Georgia this month, making for back-to-back cancellations.
“While significant work was done to prepare the venue, the current conditions do not allow for a competition that would be both fair for all athletes and aligned with the safety standards required at FWT Pro level,” FWT organizers said in a press release.
They added that the “decision was made after careful evaluation and was not taken lightly. Ensuring equal opportunity and appropriate conditions for performance, alongside athlete safety, remains our priority.”
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Courtesy Freeride World Tour
The Georgia Pro was first cancelled because of unstable snow conditions, or, in other words, avalanche danger. The re-staged competition in Küthai faced the same challenge: Europe and Austria have faced elevated avalanche danger in recent days.
Ahead of the Küthai event, organizers acknowledged that the avalanche danger was four out of five on the danger scale in the mountainous region of Tyrol (as of Friday, the danger had fallen to level three).
But, they said, the competition could go ahead on the chosen venue, Schöffi’s Face, thanks to “extensive preventive work conducted throughout the season by the local safety team, in close collaboration with FWT staff and certified mountain guides.”
“The face has been continuously secured and monitored to meet the Tour’s strict safety protocols,” they said.
On Friday, February 27, the planned day of the event, they changed course, though.
In a video shared on the FWT’s Instagram page, FWT commissioner Lolo Besse was shown standing in the finish corral at Küthai.
While he said the skiers and snowboarders were riding the venue one-by-one, “it wouldn’t have been possible for them to run a proper Freeride World Tour Pro.”
“This was a competition, this is not just having fun. And, unfortunately, it was uncontestable," Besse continued.
He also appeared at the end of the competition’s livestream, which was placed on hold for several hours, to share a similar message.
Besse said in the livestream that they had hoped for spring-like conditions, but the venue had a lot of different aspects, and reaching perfect conditions on those aspects was hard.
“To have pleasure, it’s okay,” he said. “But to be in a contest where the riders would really send it, to make a result, to push it, that would be not only difficult, but also dangerous.”
Cancelled freeride events are nothing new. From the pro circuit to grassroots junior events, wind, bad visibility, bad snow, and the risk of avalanches can all wipe a competition off the calendar.
Dealt a rough hand, the FWT athletes still made the most of the situation.
In a video shared by skier Martin Bender, they stood atop the venue “frozen” in place while Black Beatles blared, executing an apt resurrection of the viral “mannequin challenge” from 2016.