For the 6th time, Grand-Bornand is hosting a biathlon World Cup stage. The strong local popular enthusiasm made it a highlight of the season for biathletes, and not just for the French. A site planned for the biathlon at the 2030 Games in the French Alps which however raises many ecological questions.
On one side the village of Grand-Bornand, its church and its bell tower. Through the mist, the meadows in the background are green. No snow. On the other side, the shooting range and its north-facing cross-country ski trails are very white. A few flakes still cling to the trees with difficulty.
34km away, at the edge of the lake, the mayor of Annecy said stop. He withdrew his subsidy of 100,000 euros for the event from 2026. “A new sustainable model has not yet been found,” explained François Astorg on December 7 in an interview with Libération. With the uncertainties linked to the absence of snow, the calendar raises serious questions. Adapting the mountains to global warming can no longer wait. This is why the Grand-Bornand biathlon will no longer take place with Annecy.”
Trucks, more trucks
A decision and communication that caused a stir within the city’s municipal council, as told The Dauphiné. A “purely political” communication, denounces the opposition. The mayor assures his municipal council that withdrawing from the event is a way of putting pressure on the IBU (International Biathlon Federation) so that the body thinks about a “new model” and postpones the event later in the year in order to avoid the norias of trucks which bring snow into the village due to lack of sufficient snow in mid-December.
“That’s the subject,” insists the mayor of Annecy.
And so there are those famous trucks full of snow again. Like two years ago, when the image shocked social networks. Snow stored seven kilometers higher and used to build trails for biathletes. Snow dumped by trucks on the green meadows before the competition.
And what does it matter if since then, “real” snow has covered the site: here again the organizers are forced to explain themselves, again. “It’s not a question of altitude,” explains Yannick Aujouannet, secretary general of the Grand-Bornand World Cup organizing committee. “There is a lot of ignorance and images from Epinal around that. The snow that we use to make high-level competition slopes is snow that has been worked. It is artificial snow, storage snow, and there is also snow. natural which was melee Today, for any competition at any altitude you need this type of snow. Even if we had the climate we had thirty or forty years ago, we would be in the same situation. You’re not taking Usain Bolt on a dirt track today!
A quality of snow imposed in the IBU specifications to ensure the safety of athletes and sporting fairness. “When you have biathletes skiing at 60 km/h on the descents, the slopes must be of impeccable quality. And in terms of fairness, the sprint lasts an hour and a half and it has to hold up .”
Simpler conditions with snow naturally falling on the site? “Natural snow is very good, but when you have fifty or sixty skiers who have passed the same place on the same line, the slope inevitably deteriorates and it’s dangerous. And we lose movement speed so It’s no longer fair. Natural snow is possible but you need a large quantity and above all work a lot, which means a lot of damage and when you compare it with cultivated and stored snow, in the end. the advantage does not lean towards the one we think of first. we see the number of hours of grooming that would be required, the balance leans towards cultivation and storage snow.”
The city against the mountain
In Grand-Bornand, it is difficult to hear “the people of the city of Annecy” explain to them that we need to change the model. They are the first to be concerned and “who did not wait for people who come in SUVs to the mountains to come and explain to them what needs to be done to preserve the mountain”, we hear in chorus in the village.
Yannick Aujouannet recalls that the transport of this snow represents 0.8% of the carbon footprint of the event, compared to 80% for the traveling public. 75,000 people are expected over the entire weekend. The organizers have also voluntarily constrained this gauge which could be higher to preserve the spectator experience. “The volume of snow we need is reduced,” continues Aujouannet. “Unlike other ski competitions, where we consume a lot of snow, the biathlon is nothing at all!”
About twenty thousand cubic meters. And the famous trucks only brought down 7,000m³ from the Chinaillon storage site this year, compared to 12,000 in previous editions. With the ambition next year to do without it. “A transition like that doesn’t happen overnight. We have two storage sites inside the stadium which will ultimately allow us to eliminate or really drastically reduce the transport of snow. We will have to We fully exploit these two storage spaces to collect natural snow that has fallen nearby and have temperatures low enough to produce at the most opportune time and optimize this snow. Once we have that, we will be perfectly autonomous. inside the stadium We hope that this winter. allows us to store enough snow so that next year we won’t have to transport any more.”
Cautious biathletes
A situation that athletes observe carefully, cautious when we talk to them about a site that will be Olympic in 2030. “It’s not easy as an athlete because we are here to live our dream which is to skiing, points out Éric Perrot, fourth in the general World Cup ranking. Now we know that there are things that are not reasonable and that concerns us as humans. open up to us and I think that 2030 will be a real big challenge. I’m not going to give you the solutions today, but I think we need to work on it. It’s the role of international bodies to take care of it. As athletes, we also have our voice to contribute and that is what we will try to build over the next five years.”
Simon Fourcade pleads “for a discipline which will perhaps have to evolve at a given moment into a mixed discipline because we are lucky enough to be able to do roller skiing. In the long term I think that we will necessarily have to go to sites with higher altitude to try to limit what can happen today But for the moment we have this solution. The Blues coach, “very sensitive to the subject”, continues: “I see the world of sport which is singled out, but there are other areas on which we could dig deeper. I am thinking of the world of culture and music festivals. I don’t know what it means to take a pile of snow to the middle of a meadow with 20,000 people compared to festivals which can sometimes bring together more than 100,000 people.”
Haut-Savoyard Antonin Guigonnat also hears the issues. But for the vice-world champion of the mass start in 2019, “an event like the Biathlon World Cup has a low environmental impact while the socio-economic impact for our region is really important. For me, it there’s no debate. It’s sure that it’s easy to hit on the snow. Yes, it’s shocking and it clashes with our snowy track. But in reality, it remains a gentle sport. thrilled that there is an event of this magnitude on Nordic skiing I find it great and I see mostly positive things.
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