Warm temperatures have sent athletes and organizers scrambling to deal with the threat of melting snow at the Beijing 2022 Winter Paralympics. The effects of the warm weather have been felt throughout the Games with athletes minimizing competition wear, and event schedules changing to reflect the possibility of poor snow conditions.
The last few editions of the Winter Paralympics have all experienced issues with warm weather, but temperatures at the Beijing 2022 Winter Paralympics have been a far cry from those experienced during the Winter Olympics last month. Athletes at the Olympics were left to deal with gruesome injuries from cold, while some events had to be shortened due to the frigid temperatures.
The men’s giant slalom at the Olympics was complicated by blizzard conditions, while the men’s giant slalom at the Paralympics was complicated by rapidly melting snow.
The super combined event in Alpine skiing was moved up a day under the threat of melting snow. Still, the slalom portion of the event fell victim to worsening snow conditions.
Chinese sit skier Liu Sitong told the CBC, “I think it’s good enough that everyone finished the run safely and successfully. The snow course is not ideal. We rarely ski on snow in this kind of condition. On this slope, a single mistake can affect the result noticeably.”
After competing in the women’s sitting sprint in cross country skiing on Wednesday, Brigit Skarstein told AFP, “it was really sucky conditions out there, you could feel the skis being drawn into the ground.”
She added, “you pull and you feel like you’re stuck in glue. It was really slushy.” She admitted “these kinds of conditions draw your energy out of the body.”
She wasn’t the only one to label the conditions as grueling. American sit skier Aaron Pike, commented “it’s slowing everyone down. For people with less function, they’re not using their abs, they’re not using their back, they’re not throwing their body into all the pull strokes, they are just using their arms.”
“When it’s slow like this they’re going to suffer a little bit more for sure,” Pike told AFP.
Beijing 2022 Paralympic organizers have scrambled to try and mitigate the effects of the warm weather. The banked slalom competitions in snowboarding were moved up a day over fears of “high risk of rainfall and snow melting,” while the last four sessions of Alpine skiing were moved to earlier start times each day.
Yang Shu’an, Vice President of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games told reporters, “the change in weather is a natural law and we need to respect nature.”
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