During the WC 2019, several events had to move the start down due to the wind.
It involved several speed competitions and some skaters were then critical of Åre as a potential Olympic location, when the application for the 2026 Olympics was in the air.
- If it's like this way too often, I don't think the Olympics should be held here.
It doesn't deserve to be an Olympic hill.
You don't want to have to drive from the reserve start, said Mikaela Shiffrin at the time to Expressen.
This weekend Åre organized World Cup competitions in slalom and giant slalom.
Mikaela Shiffrin was once again present, and then said the following about a possible Olympics in Sweden in 2030.
- If you ask if I'm for or against, I'm somewhere in between.
I don't think I'll be racing then but if it's here I'd love to see the races here.
She continues:
- It can be very windy here with very difficult weather, that doesn't really make it fair.
Something even the Norwegian Ragnhild Mowinckel is onto:
- At the top there is a lot of wind and very often wind, so we'll see.
Olle Danielsson, CEO of the World Cup in Åre, is aware of the problem and believes that there is potential for improvement.
- We are located in a high mountain area and some of the competitions take place above the tree line and with that said we need to think about how we place the competitions.
Can we think differently to work with the mountain and prevent the weather phenomena we know such as the wind.
Peter Gerold, competition director from FIS, believes that many competition venues have similar challenges:
- You have to work with it, be prepared and look at different contingency plans for what we do in different situations and weather.
But from my point of view, if they apply, it would be a good play here.