CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy (AP) — Team USA skiers Lindsey Vonn and Mikaela Shiffrin, along with Italy’s Federica Brignone, are among many skiers who have expressed concern during these Olympics about the accelerating melting of the world’s glaciers.
And the Olympic host city of Cortina is a fitting place for them to talk about climate change: the once visible glaciers in the city have shrunk dramatically. Many have been reduced to small glaciers or patches of residual ice at high altitudes among the jagged peaks of the Dolomites. Any Olympian or spectator wanting to set their sights on a major glacier would have to make the long trek up winding mountain roads to Marmolada. It also melts quickly.
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The world’s best skiers train on glaciers because of the high-quality snow there, and a warming world threatens the future of their sport. Vonn started skiing on the glaciers of Austria when she was only 9 years old.
“Most of the glaciers I used to ski are gone,” Vonn, 41, said Feb. 3 in response to a question from The Associated Press at a pre-race press conference in Cortina before crashing on the Olympic downhill course. “So it’s very real and it’s very obvious to us.”
As snow sports athletes, Shiffrin said, they “get a real front-row view” of the monumental changes underway on some of the world’s highest and coldest peaks.
“It’s something that’s very close to our heart because it’s the heart and soul of what we do,” Shiffrin told the AP after Sunday’s race. “I would really, really like to believe and hope that with strong voices and some kind of wider policy changes within companies and governments, there is hope for a future for our sport. But I think right now, it’s a bit of a… it’s a question.”
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Italy’s glaciers are disappearing
Italian glaciologist Antonella Senese said Italy had lost more than 200 square kilometers (77 square miles) of glacier surface since the late 1950s.
“We are seeing a continuous and uninterrupted decrease in the area and volume of glaciers. In the last one or two decades, this reduction has clearly accelerated,” Senese, an associate professor of physical geography at the University of Milan’s department of environmental sciences and policies, said in an interview.
Among the peaks around Cortina d’Ampezzo are glaciers on the slopes of the Cristallo and Sorapiss mountains. The new 2015 inventory of Italian glaciers found that these glaciers had shrunk by about a third since the 1959-1962 inventory.
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Shortly after winning her second Winter Olympics gold Sunday, Brignone told the AP that skiing is “totally different” now than it was when she was younger. Brignone lives in Valle d’Aosta, about six hours away.
When she sees glaciers retreating at higher altitudes, Brignone said she’s not thinking about the future of skiing — she’s worried about the future of the planet.
“We have a lot of glaciers there, but they go up and up, every year, more and more,” she told the AP.
However, many people who do not frequent the mountains remain unaware of what is at stake, so the University of Innsbruck created the Goodbye Glaciers Project. Glacier loss has far-reaching consequences, threatening water supplies, increasing mountain hazards and contributing to sea level rise.
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The project shows how different levels of warming change the amount of ice left on selected glaciers around the world. To be included, glaciers must have an estimated volume in 2020 of at least 0.01 cubic kilometers. The Cristallo and Sorapiss glaciers no longer reach this threshold, said Patrick Schmitt, a PhD student at the University of Innsbruck.
Conservation of glaciers
About 50 kilometers (31 miles) from Cortina is the Marmolada Glacier, one of the largest glaciers in Italy and the largest in the Dolomites. A chunk of the glacier the size of an apartment building broke off in July 2022, triggering a debris avalanche that killed 11 hikers. The mountain is popular for hiking in the summer and skiing in the winter.
The University of Padua stated that in 2023 the glacier was halved in 25 years.
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It is expected to be largely gone by 2034 if the world warms to 2.7 degrees Celsius (4.9 Fahrenheit), according to the Goodbye Glaciers Project. But if warming is limited to 1.5 C (2.7 F — the international goal — the glacier’s life could be extended another six years, and about 100 glaciers in the Alps could be saved, Schmitt said.
“Reducing greenhouse gas emissions now will reduce future ice loss and lessen the impact on people and nature,” Schmitt wrote in an email. “The choices we make this decade will decide how much ice remains in the Dolomites, across the Alps and around the world.”
Globally, more than 7 trillion tons of ice (6.5 trillion metric tons) have been lost since 2000, according to a study last year. And the prospective impact of climate change on Olympic sport is enormous; the list of potential Winter Games venues is expected to shrink substantially in the coming years.
It’s not just Vonn, Shiffrin and Brignone — many Olympic skiers are concerned
In Cortina, Noa Szollos, who competes for Israel, said in an interview that the state of the glaciers nearby speaks to the state of glaciers around the world.
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“I hope we can do something about it,” she said, “but it’s a difficult time.”
Finland’s Silja Koskinen said in an interview that she can’t train on some of the glaciers she used to because of the crevasses, rocks and flowing water. Team USA skier AJ Hurt talked about starting the season in October on the glaciers of Sölden, Austria.
“Every year, I feel like we come and there’s a little bit of snow. And every time, we’re like, are we really going to start in October? There’s no snow here,” Hurt told the AP. “It’s really sad and it’s hard to ignore in this sport, certainly, when we’re around it so much and it’s so clear.”
Norwegian skier Nikolai Schirmer is leading an effort to stop fossil fuel companies from sponsoring winter sports. Burning coal, oil and gas is by far the biggest contributor to global climate change.
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In Bormio, Italy, Team USA skier River Radamus said athletes — as stewards of outdoor winter sports — should be at the forefront of trying to protect the environment as best they can.
“It’s always in the back of our minds that we’re on a dangerous trend if we don’t do something right,” Radamus said.
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AP Sports Writer Pat Graham contributed from Bormio, Italy.
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AP Winter Olympics coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics
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