EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Gian Franco Kasper, president of the FIS

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Gian Franco Kasper, president of the FISThis September, Ski Racing sent correspondent Erica Bulman to the offices of the International Ski Federation (FIS) to interview Gian Franco Kasper, the president of the federation. A portion of that interview appeared in the latest issue of Ski Racing Magazine, and the complete transcript of that exclusive interview is below.

Kasper succeeded the inimitable Marc Hodler in 1998. Before that, he was the federation’s secretary-general for over 20 years, helping see the sport through major changes, including a blossoming of new disciplines and member nations. Swiss by birth, Kasper speaks five languages. He began his professional life as a journalist in his hometown of St. Moritz. He is a voting member of the International Olympic Committee.

SKI RACING: We’re soon entering a new season. How will this one be different from previous seasons?
GIAN FRANCO KASPER: We’re entering a new season, with World Championships. We have four World Championships coming up: alpine in Bormio; nordic in Oberstdorf, Germany; freestyle in Ruka, Finland; and with snowboard we are in Whistler Mountain, Canada, so it’s a relatively long year.

We have, once again, 4,500 international competitions on the calendar, which are supervised by us; 330 out of them are World Cups, and about 150-200 Continental Cups – that includes the North America Cup and European Cups together. We have a new system in nordic skiing, the new discipline mass starts and sprints and so on.

But in alpine skiing finally we have the team event and, as we did not realize the goal to have the team event as part of the World Cup, we decided to go immediately a step further and have it as part of the World Championships. So the last day of the World Championship will be the team event. I hope it will be of interest because we have seen the team events in cross-country with the relay or in ski jumping or nordic combined. They have been extremely successful but we never had it in alpine. We can’t do it as we originally thought with all the four events in alpine, but we’ll do it now with super G and slalom. So with that we have a speed event and a technical event.

SR:Why couldn’t you have all four? Is it a question of time?
GFK: We only brought it up relatively late for the organizing committee in Bormio. The question is the downhill. You have to keep the downhill untouched, more or less, for 14 days. And in Bormio we need the downhill for the super G and for the giant slalom men and so on. So we would have to restart from zero and then you need a few more days because you have to train again etc. on the downhill.

In the future we’ll see if there are two or four disciplines, and then the so-called team event would have to be in the middle of the week and not at the end of the World Championships. Or we change the whole system, starting with the technical events and finishing with the speed. But this is a little dangerous if we have to postpone the downhill. We always said ‘let’s have it at the beginning so for sure there will be enough time to have it until the end.’ There’s a certain risk if you have it at the end.

But I personally believe this team event can be something quite spectacular. We’ve calculated it based on FIS points or World Cup points. We calculated it on computer using the results of the last World Championships, and, of course, the Austrians won, but only at the very, very last moment. They were leading after the men’s part in the downhill, they were out in third place after the ladies’, and with the slalom they went up and down, and at the end they won.

But I tell you if there is just one little incident you’re out. And you know ladies slalom for the Austrians is not the easiest part. But it might be a very interesting system.

In the new rules and this is only a detail they are six on each team but only four participate, so they can make team changes. The interesting thing for media is that the decision of who is racing is only made five minutes before the athlete starts, which may not be easy for TV commentators, but the coach can really play around.

SR: Here is an opportunity for you: Are there any myths in alpine skiing you would like to debunk?
GFK: We should in principle change a lot of things. I believe, and I know that people don’t like this, but sooner or later we have to reduce the number of athletes per nation. I am fully in favor of giving every athlete a possibility but we really opened the participation in the World Cup through [providing spots to the] European Cup winner and North American Cup winner. But in the end, all races are won more or less by one nation. It’s not against Austria but I don’t see any reason why 12 or 13 Austrians should be at the start and only four Italians or three Swiss or whatever. I don’t think this is moving in the right direction. We have to reduce this… Of course who wins if the Austrians are as successful as they have been in the past? We should have a change, this is quite clear. I think it’s correct to have four, five, or six from each nation, but not an unlimited number. That would reduce the field a bit, which makes it more interesting for television.

SR: Anything else? In terms of the actual disciplines?
GFK: There is something I would like to change for a long time. It’s concerning the slalom and giant slalom. I think that in slalom we could change the system of having two runs, two heats, two and a half, three hours apart. I think our athletes are professional enough to make an inspection of both courses at the same time, so that 15 minutes after the end of the first run you start with the second run. I think this is relatively easy to do. I think in the giant slalom it would be easy, too, except you don’t always have a hill where you could set the two races.

So that would make it more of a big party over three hours, and then it’s over and you don’t have to wait three hours in between runs. For me this [wait] is unnecessary. And it would also help us combining with the other events. Ski jumping is coming up, and cross-country. On television in many countries, we have the problem of overlapping. That would be solved with having the alpine legs together.

And then there is the question in slalom: Do we really have to go for this system or should we change the system of slalom? The easiest change would be to do it with the combined event by saying we make the slalom in two heats but only one counts. So in the first one you can take the full risk, go full out.

Start with the combined and if it is successful it will go out to the regular slalom. You have two possibilities and the better one counts. Or you make three runs and two count. You can stay on the same course or on two different courses and count the one you ranked better. For instance, you can count by the time or the ranking. So in one you fall out and the other you’re fifth place. Or one fifth and one 20th so it’s logical the fifth one counts. But those are technical things to be calculated.

I believe it would make the slalom more interesting, because the whole idea behind it is not that we want to modernize our sport to party only. Instead, what we call ‘Skifest’ is a combined, concentrated event over Friday, Saturday, and Sunday- or only Saturday and Sunday. During those two or three days we should have all the disciplines in. It should be really concentrated. That’s important for our sponsors, for incentives, and for building up of
the VIP tents and everything. Then you can really have a real party. But if you only have one slalom in a place, it’s not possible to build up all the tents or VIP areas or the orchestras for half an hour, because then the race is over and everyone leaves. But if you can really build up the Skifest over the two days, it really happens.

Nowadays it’s possible with the artificial lights with night slaloms or whatever. I think that would help for skiing- if it becomes more of an event rather than just a competition. We do it in ski jumping. We’ve moved more and more competitions into the late afternoon or the evening in the artificial light. We had to because we have to get out of the daylight for the other ski disciplines. So we will have artificial light in Oberstdorf. We will have it in Innsbruck, etc.

SR: This brings me to the question of marketing the World Cup. What do you feel is the state of the World Cup right now? What improvements do you feel need to be made and how do you see FIS making them?
GFK: Look, we are in a very good situation, I tell you very honestly, from a marketing point of view, regarding the income and so on. We made big contracts already before the financial crisis started. With Audi for instance, and Ruhrgas and whoever is in the different cups. We are quite happy we didn’t lose anything like most other sports who had a loss during the last two years. We were lucky to have the old [sponsors].

And then we have a long waiting list in principle for all disciplines for main sponsors. We have the same kind of waiting list of organizers though, so it’s not so easy for them to get involved. Our organizers have lost a lot of local sponsors, and there the money is not perhaps so much at the moment. But on the question of so-called ‘title’ sponsors, we have no problem whatsoever.

SR: OK, that’s advertising and sponsorship. What about television rights and other lucrative forms of marketing? Things could be going better in that department, for instance with the inconsistent quality of race television footage.
GFK: We have a complete chaos with the television rights. We have agencies. We have individual organizers selling rights, and in other countries we have the national ski associations selling it. This is complete chaos and it’s not good for our sport, it’s not good for the income. We could maximize the income in a good way if we put everything under one roof. That means FIS would be responsible for the selling of those rights.

[Television and marketing] have to be combined as we do in the World Championships. One should have one partner buying the rights for television and for marketing and for advertising. It makes things much easier. What we have to change, sooner or later, is this system where each individual organizing committee makes its own arrangements and sells its own marketing and television rights. That makes things so complicated. You can’t build up a real standard, where you use the same graphics, the same starting times, etc. from the beginning to the end of the winter. We don’t want to have the same style of surroundings-so that if you are in the states you can do it Texas style, and if you’re in the Bernese Oberland it’s yodeling but a few things should be standardized through the whole winter.

SR: What’s stopping you from doing that?
GFK: It’s not so easy. We have people involved, like Media Partners. They have bought rights for many races up to 2011. They have North America-that’s their basis. They don’t have Austria, Switzerland or Germany but they have everything else. In some cases they have contracts for many years, up till 2011. I’m not against Media Partners, but I am a firm believer that agencies should work as agencies and that means for me they should bring in clients. But in this case, the agency is the owner of the rights and this is not their job.

Now we have to see what we can do. We can buy out Media Partners, for instance, or go into a joint venture with them. For us what is important in the end is that our organizers get enough money from the deal and that we do not lose control of the sport. The rest, for us, has no importance. We wouldn’t take any money out of that [transaction], of course. We leave that 100 percent to the organizers. But a lot has to be done in that television strategy.

We do it in small events-in snowboarding and freestyle. But that’s also easier because we just started those things, and if you start from zero it’s easy. But it’s very, very difficult in alpine and cross-country to take things away from organizers or national associations-things that they’ve had since 100 years ago.

Even they know they would make more money, but in many cases they are not interested in the money. They are either interested in being responsible, or having the prestige to make the big negotiations. So those things have to change. We have taken the first step finally at the last Congress in spring of this year, getting a FIS commission to try to find a solution to get everything under one roof.

SR:Yes, there is a great difference in quality between footage from many of the World Cups and the television world championships for instance.
GFK: In most cases, Media Partners is not doing the product. They take over the production from the national network. Then they have no problems. But where they have the obligation to do the broadcasting, there it’s catastrophic. They save money on it.

Now if they sell Wengen to the rest of the world, it doesn’t make any difference because the race is still produced by Swiss Television in that case, but that’s exactly what I mean about having certain standards all over the year and this we can only do if we buy them out, or if we get the rights. Then for me it’s a logical thing in regards to broadcasting.

If we have the rights or if we have the mandate to sell the rights, then we also do the production ourselves. That’s not so easy. you’d need two production teams in alpine skiing, one for men and one for ladies. We don’t have to have our own production company but we can easily say we do all the races in Austria and Italy with ORF, we do the French and the Swiss and German races with Swiss Television and ARD. Say two or three or even four of the main European networks with expertise, we can put the races all over the world. So this would be then more or less a FIS production done by the experienced networks. But this only makes sense if we own the rights or have the mandate to handle the rights. But the organizers and the national associations would prefer to give the rights to Media Partners rather than to FIS.

SR: Why is that?
GFK: Because first of all, they don’t trust FIS. They don’t want to be under the umbrella where other national associations are, too. They believe with Media Partners, they are the only ones-that this company is working for them alone. They don’t realize they lose a lot of money with that.

But on the other hand, I have to tell you I was more than pleased when Media Partners stepped in when we had Eurovision alone, and Eurovision paid one dollar per event. They didn’t have to pay more: Everybody needed them. Our organizers were on their knees: ‘please Eurovision, come take our races.’ They did, but they didn’t pay of course, and then all of a sudden there was another one here, which was Halva-now Media Partners-and they offered money, so it’s quite clear they all went to the other one.

In principle, we should do the production, which we do with the World Championships- with an expert of course, and it works. We never had a major problem there. But we really need is, I wouldn’t call it centralization (they don’t like that), but a pooled system for the television rights. But if we
cannot buy out Media Partners and go step by step, it will take five or six years. It’s easy for us to change rules by saying from tomorrow morning on, the television rights are under FIS direction. That’s easy to change, but then all our national associations are in court with their old contracts and this is not politically our idea. But there we have to do a lot, and a lot can be done.

SR: How are the television ratings doing with all this confusion?
GFK: In spite of whatever happens, our television ratings were excellent last year again. In some countries they go down, considerably down. In others they go really high up. That depends on national heroes and whatever. But in the overall average worldwide, I must tell you it’s surprising that we still stay in extremely high rating, increasing 10-12 percent per year. In Italy we lose, it’s clear, because [Alberto] Tomba is not there anymore. But in Croatia, although it’s not an interesting country for the market, we went up from zero to 100. In Poland, in the ski jumping, we have a market share of almost 90 percent, with Adam Malysz, but this depends on the heroes.

SR: Of course there isn’t much competition for TV time in winter.
GFK: Okay, we have an easy situation in winter. We are almost alone. Okay, there’s biathlon, but the rest is not so important. We always find a solution timewise during the day with biathlon. And then we are at lunchtime, when no one else is [broadcasting]. The moment the summer sports start again mid-March skiing goes down. That’s normal. But we are almost alone in winter and this is our big chance during the winter. So have no doubts there. But things should be improved because it’s a mess.

I know Ski Racing is always saying FIS has to take one 100 percent control [of television distribution], and then the U.S. Ski Association is stepping up anyhow and trying to find their own solution. And they have, absolutely. …. And in North America, skiing is on a very low level. A low level in terms of public interest, of course. If you look at a North American alpine ski race, with one exception all sponsors and all advertising is European. The Europeans only do it there to be seen [on television] in Europe, although the race is in Vail or Aspen or wherever. If you see an apple juice like Rauch or something, for sure you can’t buy that in North America. And there, with the exception of Chevrolet (that is the only one they have), there is almost no interest in this respect in the States.

I don’t want to blame anybody but they have to be aware that they have to build it up in their own countries before blaming the Europeans for not doing this and that. Ski Racing always says FIS has to sell it better. Well, we do it. But not in their own market. We need the help of the Americans or the Canadians. I’m aware it’s not easy. And then we now have the problem with Park City stepping out. I know it’s not easy. But now is the moment with all this success in alpine skiing of the U.S. team. I think it would be a good moment to do something.

SR: With the women’s tour generating less interest than the men’s, have you considered the idea of splitting the men’s and women’s World Cup tours like in tennis, with the WTA and ATP, which is a very successful formula? Or perhaps the opposite: Bringing the two together on a more regular basis to allow the women to benefit from the attention the men consistently receive on a weekly basis, but also drawing the maximum from the venues, which are often costly to set up for only a couple of World Cup races?
GFK: That was always the case with the women. But it will remain this way whatever you do. If you sell it separately or not. In principle, they are separated. But the idea that everybody has, (mainly the media and also the sponsors), which is an excellent idea, is to put them as much together as you can, to be in the same place. Media-wise this is good, because the moment the girls are with the men they get more media automatically.

The problem is the ladies are always on the losing side if you put them together. That works in an indoor sport. But if we take Val d’Isere for example, where we normally have them together, if there is the slightest postponement of an event then it’s ‘Okay, let’s do the ladies on Monday.’ We give full priority to the men’s downhill. The ladies are always on the losing side and this is not good for the girls. It’s good for the event if they are together but if you are the normal spectator, and 99 percent of our spectators are sitting at home in front of a television screen, they don’t care very much where the race they see comes from. If they have the ladies first from Cortina, and then the men’s from Val d’Isere, it doesn’t make much difference to them. It’s still on the same screen.

But it would be nice to have them together. We have them now together at the beginning and at the end of the season and in between we try as much as we can but it’s always a question of technical installations, where you can’t have them for technical reasons on the same course. A national television network doesn’t have enough equipment to produce both. It’s easy enough for football; you have just a stadium. But if you have to do the whole cabling, building up television in skiing takes 14 days. Take Switzerland: We couldn’t have Wengen and Adelboden at the same time. Swiss television doesn’t have enough equipment. They have all their equipment more or less all they have for Wengen for three weeks, and then they can move on. But having men’s and ladies together, on different courses, they can’t afford it and they don’t have the equipment.

SR: Coming back to the issue of men and women racing on different courses, last year the women found themselves skiing on a lot of men’s courses because of weather postponements, and insisted throughout the year they would actually like to race on more men’s courses, more often. Would that be an option? It’s both something they seem to want, and something which could maximize the use of a course over a weekend, if organizers or going to the trouble and the cost of preparing a venue anyway.
GFK: They can go to men’s courses in many cases. But not all of them. You always have the period when the girls insist they want to be on the men’s courses and then we put them on the men’s courses and the next thing is that they insist that they have separate ones because they are too dangerous, too risky, too speedy, whatever. Now you could have the girls for sure on men’s courses but not during the same period. The reason is that the men’s are on ice and the ladies are on snow.

You can’t put the girls on a men’s slalom, which is completely iced. Even now we have to have two days in between at World Championships if it’s the same slope in order to redo the whole course. You have to break the ice and start from zero. Their techniques are unfortunately so different. We do it in the Finals, you know. We have two downhills on the same hill and they use different lanes. Then it’s possible. In cross-country we have them always together. That’s relatively easy from a technical point of view.

With this team event we have exactly what we want. We have the men and ladies together and they have to ski on the same course. That’s clear.

SR: Would you say the team event is an attempt to ‘modernize’ the sport? To keep up with other sports? How would you compare alpine skiing to other sports? In many respects it can be viewed as a bit old-fashioned, no?
GFK: The sport of skiing is, I wouldn’t say old-fashioned but very traditional. And by the way I have to tell you, soccer, too. Soccer hasn’t changed its rules in 70 years. We change our rules very often, but those are the so-called traditional
sports. We try in principle, not in every detail, but try to keep the sports part in the traditional, conservative way, because we believe the sport part is not bad.

Perhaps we are so traditional because also we have never changed our environment, we are still in the Alps and on the mountains. We can’t change this. We can’t ski in bikinis like in beach volleyball. Very honestly, all such things are easy to do. But if you look at skiing in its techniques and in forms, they developed in a crazy way from one year to another automatically. People don’t realize it because this is almost automatic. We couldn’t use an old downhill that we had years ago or even five years ago. Like Albertville. Val d’Isere with the new World Championships? You cannot use the courses of ‘92 anymore. That’s excluded. We could use ‘La Face’ but you have to rebuild it, so you see how things have changed. But people don’t realize that. The equipment has changed extremely, making it easier for the public.

SR: And exactly how important is that for FIS?
GFK: Alpine skiing is a sport mainly for everybody, practiced by millions. If you look at, well most sports, it’s a sport purely for athletes and we should not lose the identification of the spectator with the competitor. With the equipment, we insist the equipment used by the top competitors is the same, or at least looks the same, as the normal tourist uses. The tourist watching skiing says ‘Well, he is doing exactly the same thing I am doing. Well, he is a little better but in principle he does the same.” If you don’t want to lose this identification of the normal spectator, you cannot do it in a completely different, modern way. It’s something that you and I do if we see it. ‘He does it better but that’s it.’ We are a public sport, and our sport and our mountains live from the recreation skis and not from these few athletes. In principle, competition and the World Cup is nothing else than a showcase for skiing in general, or an instrument or a tool for promoting skiing in general.

SR: Nothing but a tool?
GFK: Our success should always be measured not by television ratings but by the number of people, tourists, leisure skiers we see on the slopes and courses. In tourism we can, in the end measure, our success. The more tourists we have, the more we did for skiing and you know even our statutes state very clearly the main goal of FIS is the promotion of skiing, not of the competition of skiing. So we see ourselves as promoters of the sport, bringing the people to the snow. And we use the showcase as the instrument of PR to bring people to the ski slopes.
That’s why our resorts do it. They do it to attract tourists. In football, you don’t need it. The stadium in Rome doesn’t depend on the tourists that you attract to Rome because of the stadium. But in a city like Wengen, Val d’Isere, Kitzbuehel, they all live from skiing so for them it’s a different approach.

That’s why every restaurant owner or whoever pays a part to have his own race on television. But also cross-country is a touristic leisure sport, a recreational sport. Ski jumping is different. This is made for specialists. Bobsleigh, you don’t do as a tourist. It’s nice to watch, but it’s athletes and nobody else. That’s why we insist so much on this identification with the public.

SR: Still, you need to keep up with the other sports if you are going to be able to use ski racing competition as a successful tool to promote skiing worldwide, no?
GFK: The event and whatever is around the competition has to be improved and modernized and made more for young people. We need this action in the finish area, with bands and whatever. Then people immediately get the feeling this is a modern sport. Look, freestyle or snowboarding are a new thing, but in principle it is the same thing as skiing. But their approach or their event is made up in a way of partying much more than anything else. I don’t believe one should really change the sport part as such to make a pure show of it because that I would call to prostitute our sport. And we don’t have to do it. The sport should be the main item, not just part of the show, and around the sport you can make all the shows you want. But don’t prostitute the sport as such. If I look at some cycling events, this six days in cycling, where you are in the stadium and you turn around for six days and nights, you very often get the feeling the sport is just a show. For instance, six days in cycling, the sports part is the least important one. There, it’s a big party and oh yeah, there is also cycling. Or you have a party, and in between you have a boxing match or whatever. There I have my doubts.”

SR: OK, let’s talk a bit about doping. Doping received more attention than ever at the Olympics in Athens. We know it’s a problem in a lot of sports and in particular in cross-country skiing, along with several other endurance sports. How big a problem is doping in alpine skiing? Are steroids a problem?
GFK: In alpine skiing there is almost no endurance, because two and a half minutes you can do that without medical help. Where my fears are, and they are very open, is with the growth hormones. That’s something that would probably bring something in alpine skiing because it gives you the necessary strength, the muscles you need. In alpine skiing and ski jumping, I have a certain fear that not everything is clean.

SR: But so far there have been very few cases of positive cases involving so-called heavy drugs.
GFK: Every one of our ski World Cups in all the disciplines has doping controls. We have hundreds of out-of-competition controls, but the positive cases we’ve had until now in alpine skiing are mainly mistakes or really stupid things, not what we call heavy doping over years and big cheating.

We have the problem in every sport but in alpine there are some reasons that speak against doping. One is a stupid one. You will laugh, but most of our athletes are mountain farmer boys or girls. They fear the needle. And they don’t like medication or their parents don’t like it. The tradition is to keep away from medication. The mountain boys don’t need medication until they die. You don’t need that. It sounds ridiculous but medication is something which is suspicious anyhow.

The second thing is, our system of having competition twice or three times a week, every week, during the whole winter period, makes it very difficult to get doped. It’s easy in track and field if you dope yourself just for the Olympics or a specific date. Now in skiing it’s completely different. Having it every week makes it very difficult to get ready with steroids, trying to build up to a certain time. If you are from November to March competing every weekend, it’s more difficult technically.

SR: What about testing in alpine skiing? Are you taking blood samples now in view of future tests for growth hormone which are being developed? Would you consider sanctioning positive tests retroactively?
GFK: I am very happy that now apparently we have a system to detect it (growth hormone) and we will of course test every racer on this as soon as the system is validated from a legal point of view. We will test every skier at every competition- the best skiers, and a few at random, as well as field tests out of competition. Now, for the time being, the test is not validated but we will test them with urine and now also with blood screening, as we’ve been doing for cross-country already. [We will test] eventually for growth hormone and other all the so-called new products, like the BALCO system and so on.

SR: Because you’ve h
ad problems in other ski circuits.
GFK: Mainly in cross-country, because of the endurance side of the sport. In cross-country we’ve had more than enough scandals. In snowboard we have the social drugs as theycall them but we never can be sure about the other kinds.

SR: On a completely separate topic: Is global warming an issue at all these days? Is it one day going to lead to the death of the sport as some pessimists foresee?
GFK: Hundreds of scientists will confirm we have global warming and the same number will tell you ‘You know, this is a small little period which will have no influence on the long range.’ So you have about 50-50. Basically, I just don’t want to believe in global warming, that’s clear [laughing]. But the last years, with higher temperatures, helped us in most areas of skiing to get artificial snow, man-made snow. It really helped. A few winters with bad conditions helped politically in the different areas to get this snowmaking, which was not always very easy. It’s easier in North America than in Europe. It was helpful there.

Last winter was a good snow winter and the year before, too. But if you look back at the statistics, we always had periods with a lot of snow and periods without snow and with high and low temperatures. I don’t think we should exaggerate. In climatic history I think 10 years are not a factor. Perhaps 10,000 years. Of course a certain risk is there, and if we get really high temperatures let’s say 1-2 degrees more as an overall we will have problems in skiing. But I’m not speaking of competitive skiing. This is not influenced by [global warming] But of touristic skiing, that our so-called lower resorts, 600 meters over sea level or so, they might have problems.

SR: What about the glaciers, used for both racing and training? You cannot deny they are shrinking.
GFK: Yes, for many, many years. I don’t like ski racing on glaciers. There are some glaciers you can use, even for training, but we have to be very, very careful. The reason is if you really want to do full training, you need the chemicals. Artificial aids. Even on glaciers, and this is really not good for the glaciers. If you just ski on them it’s no problem, but the moment you start with fertilizers and whatever, putting them on glaciers, I don’t think it’s in our way of protecting the glaciers. The glaciers at the moment are going back, but for the last 20 years they go back. But what is 20 years? It took them 5 million years to grow, and now it takes them 5 million years to go back perhaps. They go up and down, let’s be very honest. How often do I read in the papers ‘Global Warming! No Snow!’ And then we have a cold winter like I think three years ago, with minus 25 even here. I saw in Blick ‘We’re going back into a new Ice Period!’