Article

Abstract

Fake snow is increasingly a part of high-level international snowboarding and skiing competitions including at events hosted by the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) and the Olympics. This reliance has grown especially rapidly at the Winter Olympics with the selection of unsuitable host sites for recent editions and the realities of a changing climate, higher winter temperatures, and unsuitable precipitation levels. While the use of artificial snow allows competition when snow conditions are poor in these locations, this also results in problematic environmental outcomes. Given the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) alleged commitment to sustainability over the past few decades and recent calls for increased environmentalism at FIS events, it is important to interrogate the increase of artificial snow across recent iterations of the Games to demonstrate the growing environmental problems of hosting snowboarding and skiing competitions in unsuitable locales—and look forward to the 2026 Winter Games that are continuing this trend. Specifically, this article argues that the inability of the IOC to effectively amend its own host city selection process and recruit suitable hosts for future editions of the Winter Olympics has resulted in an increasing reliance on artificial snow. These failures exemplify the ongoing concerns with the IOC’s ability to address sustainability concerns amidst the Olympic Movement’s continued greenwashing.