How climate change could impact - & even help - Salt Lake City's bid to host another Winter Olympics

As Salt Lake City continues its quest to host another Winter Games a decade or more from now, many Olympic athletes say they’re already in a downhill race against disappearing winters.

You can feel that desperate chase in the life of U.S. snowboardcross athlete Alex Deibold, who won a bronze medal at the 2014 Games in Sochi, Russia. He’s among a growing number of Olympians speaking out on climate change as they see weather conditions for skiing, sliding and ice sports gradually melting away.

The 33-year-old moved to Utah full time two years ago, and his Olympic dreams have made him a witness to vanishing glaciers in the Alps, akin to islands swallowed by the rising sea. He’s seen slushy and sometimes dangerous course conditions and tournaments canceled due to a lack of snow. New weather wild cards seem to emerge every season, even at once-reliable training venues.

“We have to travel to the ends of the earth, to the bottom of the world to Tierra del Fuego in Argentina or the high glaciers in Switzerland,” Deibold told The Salt Lake Tribune. “We do a training camp in Saas Fee, Switzerland, and just what we’ve seen in the glacier receding ... it’s terrifying."

Read more: https://www.sltrib.com/news/2019/07/06/how-climate-change-could/
(Salt Lake Tribune)