Athletes Launch #keepPGSolympic Push Ahead of 2026 Milano-Cortina Decision
More than 70 active FIS Snowboard Alpine World Cup riders and junior clubs from 12 nations have flooded Instagram with personal clips under the hashtag #keepPGSolympic, urging Olympic organisers to retain Parallel Giant Slalom for the 2026 Milano-Cortina Games.
Athletes Rally on Instagram After Ledecká Post
The campaign began in December but accelerated after two-time Olympic champion Ester Ledecká posted a 30-second selfie from her Czech training base. “An amazing sport that definitely deserves to stay on the biggest stage,” she told her 260,000 followers. Within 10 days, riders from the United States, Korea, Japan, Canada and seven European countries had uploaded tributes, many filmed at dawn sessions or night training. Italian veteran Roland Fischnaller, 42, included footage of his eight-year-old twins weaving through poles; Bulgarian pioneer Radoslav Yankov stitched clips of the kids he coaches. Analytics firm CreatorIQ counted 1.1 million unique accounts reached by 24 February, a number organisers say rises “every time another federation reposts.”
Low-Impact Event Pitched as Green Option
Uwe Beier, the International Ski Federation’s snowboard alpine race director, says the discipline’s small footprint helps its Olympic case. A parallel course needs only 35 metres of vertical drop and “a hand-width of packed snow,” he told fis-ski.com, far less than the 80 cm of machine-made cover common on downhill slopes. Energy use drops in step: one World Cup in Austria last season consumed 18,000 kWh for snowmaking, against 125,000 kWh for the neighbouring downhill. FIS medical data list 0.6 serious injuries per 1,000 runs in parallel events, roughly half the snowboard-cross rate.
Rogla Photo Finish Fuels Broadcast Case
Television executives got a tidy highlight on 31 January at Slovenia’s Mt. Rogla. Korea’s Sangho Lee and Fischnaller crossed the men’s final finish line so tightly that organisers used a 3,000-frame-per-second camera to confirm Lee’s 0.003-second win—about the width of a glove. The clip drew 1.4 million views in 48 hours, outperforming every other Alpine World Cup highlight this winter. Sponsor Audi logged a 22% spike in brand mentions during the broadcast, a metric Olympic rights-holders will weigh when hearings begin this spring.
Junior Funding Tied to Olympic Status
National budgets still follow five-ring exposure. “If kids can’t dream of the Games, government grants vanish,” said Polish head coach Tomasz Mackiewicz, whose 40 teenagers posted a group video from a night session in Zakopane. China added snowboard parallel to its 2022 school curriculum only after the discipline appeared at PyeongChang 2018; participation has since tripled to 12,000 registered riders, the Chinese Ski Association reports. When ski-mountaineering was dropped after Sochi 2014, France cut youth funding 35% within a season—an echo riders fear could repeat.
FIS Council to Rule in May
The campaign is timed for the FIS council meeting in Vilnius on 19 May, when the federation will forward its final 2026 quota package to the IOC. Athletes plan to present social-media metrics plus a 15,000-signature petition gathered by grassroots clubs. They will also cite gender parity—women have raced the same distance and purse as men since 2014—and venue versatility: the temporary parallel course at Beijing 2022 was built, raced and removed in 14 days on a novice slope already slated for public use.
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Resources
- FIS Snowboard Alpine World Cup calendar
- #keepPGSolympic Instagram collection
- “Power of Parallel” sustainability brief – FIS PDF
- Safe Slopes parent guide
Source: FIS communications
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