Salzburg: Snow shortage, sno' problem for 2010

Snow? Who needs snow?
    Officials promoting Salzburg’s bid for the 2014 Olympic Winter Games on Thursday laughed off the lack of snow during a crucial visit by IOC inspectors.
SALZBURG, Austria — Snow? Who needs snow?
    Officials promoting Salzburg’s bid for the 2014 Olympic Winter Games on Thursday laughed off the lack of snow during a crucial visit by IOC inspectors.
    Members of the International Olympic Committee evaluation team may have been wishing they had brought sunscreen and shorts on their whirlwind venues tour that began in neighboring Germany at the world’s first artificially refrigerated ice track in Schoenau am Koenigssee.
    “We can show you pictures. Last year at the same time, we would have been standing in snow like this,” Gernot Leitner, one of the bid’s executive directors, told reporters during a briefing in Radstadt that had been moved outdoors because of the warm, sunny weather. He pointed to his hips to indicate how much snow the region had a year ago.
    “We have the warmest [winter] in 100 years this year but basically this area is very, very secure in snow,” he said. “The ski resorts have no problem at all.”
    Over the past winter, unseasonably mild weather in much of Austria and the region has led to the cancellation of sports events and caused concern among environmentalists and those in the tourism industry who heavily rely on winter sports to make a living. In January, scientists warned that glaciers will all but disappear from the Alps by 2050.
    Leitner said the IOC commission had “not really” raised any snow-related concerns and that the issue had solely come up on a humorous level. He also noted that over the past winter, Salzburg exported snow to Germany for biathlon events.
    “It won’t be an issue,” Leitner said.
    Salzburg is competing against Sochi, Russia, and Pyeongchang, South Korea. The IOC will select the host city on July 4. IOC inspectors, who have visited the other two contenders, began their four-day visit to Salzburg on Wednesday.
    “Of course we’re getting questions like, ‘How much does it snow here normally?’ ” said bid official Franz Klammer, a former Olympic downhill gold medalist. He added that Zauchensee and Flachauwinkl “always have a lot of snow.”
    Salzburg Mayor Heinz Schaden acknowledged that IOC commission members had not seen any snow during their morning tours of Puch-Urstein, the designated site for a new ice hockey arena, nor in Bischofshofen, a ski jumping village.
    Chirping birds and dazzling sunshine greeted them in Radstadt-Altenmarkt, where new courses for cross-country, biathlon and nordic combined are currently being developed and where a “Snow Village” for housing athletes is planned.
    “Not yet, but they have seen the ice,” Schaden joked, referring to the ice track at Koenigssee.
    Schaden whizzed down the track in a bobsled Thursday morning, cheered on by about 100 school children waving flags and ringing cow bells.
    A breathless Schaden told reporters the trip had been “fast.”
    “This is how it works here … we know what we’re doing in Salzburg,” he said.
    For the Olympics, the track, situated on a sparkling alpine lake, will undergo a US$26 million renovation.
    “It’ll look quite different, especially in the finish area. There’s a very, very strong commitment and they’re great partners,” Leitner said, referring to German authorities.
    In the afternoon, commission members headed into the mountains to Flachau, Flachauwinkl and Zauchensee, venues that would host the snow events.
    “I can confirm that things are gong very, very well … just minor recommendations that we’re taking and building into our concept,” Leitner said.
    One recommendation was beefing up the number of beds in the “Snow Village” to be situated around a small castle.

— The Associated Press