Ski Racing - January 16, 2012

we said, “Lets go with it, let’s launch a World Snow Day and gain momentum
and develop a platform for anyone who wants.”
There are no limits, there are no barriers. It’s about people having fun in the
snow, explore, experience, enjoy — especially young people and families,
and to motivate them, it needn’t be something that’s expensive or where you
need the latest gear; get out there and play in the snow.

OK, and how is the Clean as Snow anti-doping campaign going? We launched that Kuusamo with nordic skiers; that was a logical place to do it. Lahti was 10 years ago, and we’re now a lot poorer in financial terms and a lot richer in experience and clean sport. With Clean as Snow, which WADA helped develop, the athletes sign boards and feel as though, “We’re signing up to clean sport.” It’s a good message, like World Snow Day. We’re trying to get the message out there without spending exorbitant resources; we want to be a modest organization. The commercial activties of FIS are designed to generate resources FOR the sport and not FROM the sport.

For women in high-level positions at sporting organizations,
where are we now compared to when you began?
It was a novelty back then, but I didn’t have an issue with it because it was
the world I’d come from; I’d come from having been a skier, but I was also
a tomboy. I played soccer — football — and I could communicate very well
with men. I didn’t really have an issue with it. I was well accepted within
the world because I got on with my job and they saw I could do it. …Over
the years, definitely, there’s been an enormous increase in the number of
women in senior positions. …Of course, it’s not a parity, but those who I
work closely with, we all have the same philosophy, which is we want to be
accepted for the work we do and not because it’s good to have a woman
in charge. I wouldn’t accept to be selected on those criteria; I would only
wish to be selected because I’m capable of doing the job.

Can you tell us about Olympic qualifiers for some of the new dis-
ciplines — TTR [Ticket to Ride] and X Games events will not serve
as Olympic qualifiers for 2014?
Basically all competitions that are in the FIS calendar and have FIS points
will be valid for the eligibility of an athlete — a nation will earn its quota
places through the Olympic allocation list. What TTR would like is that
some of their events have the same status as the World Cup, but we’re not
there for 2014, we’re having ongoing dialogue about the whole process…
the TTR’s biggest concern is the overload of athletes in slopestyle and
halfpipe. What we’ve been concerned about is that TTR events are run
under different rules and it’s not possible to have competitions under differ-
ent rules coming to the same qualification list — 100 meters is 100 meters.
Those discussions are moving forward.