The annual meeting of the FIS Council that finished in Greece recently has seen a number of important changes to ski racing. Minimum penalties, Telemark and maximum number of racers allowed in various races all came up as well as the eligability and qualification for City Events.
The major rule change going into next season is the adaptation of the minimum penalty for the different categories in alpine skiing. The penalty remains 0.00 for Olympics, World Cup and World Championship but has been raised in the other categories to 15.00 for Continental Cup levels and 20.00 for National Championships. That way, the difference of performance level between the World Cup and other races is reflected better.
Starting with the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships in 2021 in Cortina, the individual parallel event will join the calendar. The exact format to work on a harmonisation of the existing formats will be determined in a newly appointed working group.
Another highly anticipated decision was the eligibility and qualification for City Events. In the past, a qualified racer created a quota for its nation and could be replaced by another athlete from the country. However, now if a qualified athlete is not participating, the spot will go to the next athlete in the WCSL slalom, regardless of nationality.
A first step was made with a national quota reduction to better control the starting field size. On the men’s side, a National Ski Association may now enter a maximum of eight competitors per event, instead of nine, excluding the personal qualifications from the Continental Cups, thereby implementing a reduction of one athlete.
The exciting news for Telemark is that FIS have announced that they will push for Telemark to be included in the Olympic Games for Beijing. The Congress approved that FIS proposal to the International Olympic Committee the following new events for inclusion in the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games programme (in addition to existing proposed events): Freestyle aerials mixed team event, Freeski big air, Snowboard cross team event, Snowboard alpine mixed team parallel event, Snowboard parallel slalom, Snowboard mixed team slalom as well as Telemark parallel sprint.
FIS releases