For Olympic athletes, they only have eyes for one prize when they compete: an Olympic gold medal.

But for some, like American cross-country skier Jessie Diggins, they focus on more important matters when off the course.

“You can replace a medal, you can create a new one. You still have that memory,” Diggins said.

“But we have a planet. We have a shot. We can’t spoil this.

The issue of climate change is there and it is real. No one knows better than the athletes who compete in the Winter Olympics.

They find that it is not only the planet and the environment that are affected by climate change, but their respective sports.

“If the snow goes away, then my job goes away and all the things I love to do in the winter go away,” said American snowboarder Brock Crouch. “The reality is that there are things that have been a big part of my life and a big part of my skiing career that won’t be available to my kids by the time they’re my age.”

How did these athletes perceive the effects of climate change?

What is one of the biggest effects of climate change? Increase in avalanches.

Climate change causes inconsistency in weather patterns. This means that the structure of the snowpack on the mountains may differ. If a lower layer of snow is less compacted on a mountain, when more compacted snow falls on it, it is not strong enough to hold the upper layer, causing an avalanche, which can be fatal to anyone on the mountain. mountain at the time.

Croupton knows only too well how dangerous an avalanche is. The 22-year-old was involved in a near-fatal accident with an avalanche in April 2018 while filming a snowboarding video in British Columbia.

“I grew up surfing in Southern California, and I tell everyone that I felt like I was in a huge lime ball forever,” Crouch said of what it was like. was like being trapped in the avalanche. “And I couldn’t really — I kept seeing like blue and snow and blue and snowball and snow.”

The Southern California snowboarder was hospitalized with a broken back, ruptured pancreas and no front teeth. There was a chance he would never hike again, which meant his days as a snowboarder would be over.

But Crouch has recovered from the crash and now has his sights set on Olympic gold in Beijing. But he now walks through life with a new understanding of the dangers of climate change.

“It sucks when people don’t believe it or see it changing because a lot of people don’t get the chance to travel the world and go check out all these cool places,” Crouch said. “So when you see it in front of your eyes, it’s something pretty scary for sure.”

It doesn’t take a near-death experience to see the effects of climate change.

American freestyle skier David Wise was able to physically see what climate change is doing to the environment. The Reno, Nevada native trains in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, and he sees the kind of transformation the glaciers are going through there.

“Ironically, I mean, I’m talking about this from one of the first places where I could really experience climate change first-hand,” Wise said. “I think the first time I came here was 15 years ago and the glacier was almost down, like in town. And I could see the glacier retreating.

Wise understands that as a winter athlete he has unique opportunities to experience these glaciers first hand while training for his sport. But it has now opened his eyes to really see how the environment is moving in a negative direction.

“I think scientifically we can all read a million things and you can know it’s a problem and you can scientifically understand why it’s a problem,” Wise said. “But when you see this actually happen and you’re like, ‘Wow, this glacier is literally a thousand feet above where it was when I got here, or 1,500 feet above,’ it puts things into perspective for you.”

Can events use artificial snow instead of real snow?

One of the solutions to lack of snow is to create snow by hand.

Artificial snow has become increasingly popular, especially with climate change beginning to wreak havoc in the mountains.

It may look the same to the normal spectator, but artificial snow has a much greater impact on those who rely on snow to compete.

“Real snow is so much softer, isn’t it? So if you fall you have snow banks on the side of the course, you don’t slide through rocks, trees and mud where you could actually be very injured,” Diggins said. “Now that we’re moving to a lot more artificial snow, the course is getting faster and more icy and actually a bit dangerous for us because if you start sliding, you’re going to keep sliding on the ice. And so we saw, I think, more injuries because of that.

With climate change affecting glaciers, artificial snow may be the only solution in the future, which does not bode well for the health of these athletes.

How will climate change affect future Winter Olympics events?

In order to organize an Olympic Games, you need a site to host all the events.

Well, given the rate at which climate change is impacting the environment, the host city options available to host the Winter Olympics will diminish in the future.

“What we’re really seeing is that the geography of where you can host the Winter Olympics is really starting to change both in our lifetime, but certainly for the next generation of athletes,” said said Daniel Scott, a professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. .

Scott has spent over 20 years studying climate change, sports and tourism. The professor led a research group that tracked emissions trends that projected what temperatures would look like in some potential host cities for the Winter Olympics in the future.

What they discovered was that of the 21 previous Winter Games host cities, nine would be too hot for the Olympics to be held in those locations in the future. Two of these cities, Sochi and Vancouver, recently hosted the Winter Olympics.

And it’s not just winter events. Temperatures will also rise during the summer months, further worsening conditions for those competing outdoors.

“When we look at what climate change means for golf, what does it mean for your ability to play football in southern states and play games in extreme heat?” said Scott. “There are implications in the world of sport.”

Scott said the only way to slow climate change is to act now.

“If you’re an outdoor or winter sports fan, there’s personal interest,” Sott said. “If you want to preserve that for future generations or if your children are into these kinds of sports, if skiing is part of your lifestyle, there is a real difference between a low-emission future and a high-emission future. This is therefore one of the key elements that we can retain. We can’t stop all impacts, but we can stop the worst of them.

How have winter sportspeople mobilized to fight against climate change?

For change to happen – real change – you have to go big leagues in DC And that’s exactly what these winter athletes are doing.

Dr. Elizabeth Burakowski, a climatologist and assistant professor at the University of New Hampshire, is a member of the Science Alliance for Protect Our Winters, a non-profit organization whose mission is to protect the outdoors by advocating for climate change legislation. climate change.

The organization brings winter athletes to Washington to speak to Congress about climate change and what needs to be done to combat it.

“They get political,” Burakowski said. “They talk about climate change. And we’re getting to a point where I feel like the conversations are loud enough for people in Congress to listen.

One of the great benefits of having these athletes speak on behalf of an organization like Protect Our Winters is that not only do they have first-hand experiences with climate change, but they are also not viewed as political figures in the public eye.

“These are such credible voices in this debate because people don’t see them as political,” said Michael Bennet, a US senator from Colorado. “People see them as people who represent the United States of America and speak with conviction based on their experience on the ground or, in our case, in the mountains.”

Diggins was one of those athletes who visited Capitol Hill in 2018. She wants to make sure future winter athletes have the same opportunities to play and compete at these events that she had.

“I’m worried about the future of our sport,” Diggins said. “And I really want, you know, my children and grandchildren to one day be able to ski and experience the sport that I love so much. I don’t want to be the generation that ruins everything for everyone.

What can people do in the face of climate change?

Ordinary citizens can help counter the effects of climate change, big and small, in different ways.

You could follow the same path as Wise and completely reshape your lifestyle.

Wise and his family have a place in Nevada where they grow and hunt their own food rather than buying packaged goods at the grocery store. Their goal is that in about 10 years they will be completely off the grid.

It’s not an easy lifestyle, but a lifestyle that the freestyle skier wants to continue in order to reduce their carbon footprint.

“Actually, we’re just struggling one step at a time,” Wise said. “So, I mean, my garden has just been a complete failure for the last two seasons, but we’re looking up. Next year is going to be a little bit better the year after, for me, a little better.

If hitting the reset button on your lifestyle isn’t right for you, you can start by changing simple things like using reusable water bottles or cleaning up litter in the environment, as Crouch put it. do.

If you want to go further, take Diggins’ advice and contact your local congressional representatives about it.

“If every person would write to their senator and say, ‘I care about this, I’d like to see you move this agenda forward on the fiscal reconciliation file,’ for example, that might change things,” Diggins said. .

“It shouldn’t be a political issue. It doesn’t have to be a split between party lines… We’re all on the same planet. We all breathe the same air. We all have to go through this together. Maybe it’s something that needs to be bipartisan and maybe we can take the politics out of it to the extent that we all need to care.