• last year
In #Austria a plastic ski slope has been created in the hope of encouraging more people to practise the sport again. The spot used to be a snow #slope but due to the lack of #snow that’s not possible anymore.

#Vienna #sport #climatechange

Category

🥇
Sports
Transcript
00:00 What used to be Vienna's snow-covered skiing slope is now a plastic carpeted hill.
00:04 Austrian-Chinese Yasheng Li and his fellow Viennese classmates
00:11 are nevertheless happy about their first skiing experience.
00:14 It's a lot of fun. Maybe one time I bring my parents as well.
00:19 By offering skiing lessons for free, Vienna is trying to preserve the Alpine Republic's
00:26 national sport. I think it used to be a skiing nation. I think it has changed,
00:32 especially with the prices going up and with lots of immigrants to Austria. And so again,
00:40 to have an opportunity like this where also immigrants have the chance to learn it, it's
00:44 really cool. Philipp Scholler, who builds this dry slope, says up until 15 years ago he used to ski
00:51 here on real snow. It's different when you don't have the snow, when you don't have the whole
00:58 slope, when you have a different lift. But yeah, all in all, I'm very happy to still have skiing
01:05 right in the city of Vienna. And I think that's a big win. Are these plastic carpets going to
01:11 replace snow on Austria's skiing slopes? Meteorologists say yes if climate change
01:17 isn't slowed down. Because if it isn't, by the end of the century most Alpine ski resorts will
01:22 lack natural snow. However, if goals set by the Paris Agreement are reached,
01:28 then traditional winter tourism can be saved. With dry slope lessons already booked out for
01:36 the season, the Austrian capital plans to continue its plastic skiing initiative
01:40 in the upcoming years. Johannes Blechberger, CGTN, Vienna.

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