Kasper calls for ‘mass movement’ to reignite young skiers

By Marina Knight

During the pause between World Cups, the head of international ski competition called for a mass movement to save the sport of alpine ski racing.
The message came via a video on Ski Racing’s Web site. As Gian Franco Kasper ranted on, it was difficult not to wonder what the heck he was doing.
He set up a thesis for why kids’ interest in the sport is waning this way (the entire video can be viewed at www.skiracing.com):
Something must be done. “Kids these days are real couch potatoes. They don’t like to move.” Not only are kids lazy, but so many immigrants are flooding into countries like Switzerland that it is causing a “cultural disconnect” between them and snow sports.
It was difficult not to snicker when Kasper blamed skiing’s dwindling numbers on Europe’s immigrant community. Not only does the immigrant community seem to get blamed for nearly every social problem in the European Union (just pick up the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and read some quotes), but his rationale completely excluded one very obvious problem with the sport:
It is prohibitively and staggeringly expensive.
In the United States, the price of a lift ticket has risen to about $70 per day, vs. $20 twenty years ago. New ski equipment (boots, skis, clothes, etc.) can easily run in the thousands of dollars.
While it’s true a day of skiing is considerably less expensive in most of Europe, rental skis are a more affordable option than buying, and there are more ski areas to choose from, a day on the slopes can easily run $60 to $70.
Perhaps the immigrants can’t afford to ski.
To address the issue of our so-called inactive youth, Kasper said the FIS is ready to do its part in funding a worldwide campaign involving governments, health ministries, UNESCO and the International Olympic Committee to get kids off the couch. Part of the plan would be to sponsor skiing opportunities with the hope that young people take to the sport and choose to spend their free time on the slopes.
While it’s laudable that the FIS is thinking of ways to solve its numbers problem, until the cost of skiing comes back down from the stratosphere, it will not span beyond the upper classes. In other words, Kasper’s strategy will only serve to get the rich kids off the couch in the long term.
If the FIS (perhaps the ski areas themselves) emphasized ways to lower the cost of skiing, they might spark more interest in the sport across a broader social spectrum.
More directly, perhaps it’s up to ski areas themselves to put two and two together (the rising cost of skiing and dwindling skier visits) and lower the price of skiing.
There are obviously a number of complexities involved — a growing number of competing activities for young people to choose from, and rising fixed costs of running a ski area — but an effort to lower the entry price point to mountain access certainly wouldn’t hurt.