Daniel Jankowski s6131

SKIING
The most popular winter sport A bit of history It is believed that skiing comes from Scandinavia. In the beginning skiing wasn't meant to entertain but to help people in daily life. Two wooden planks attached to fur boots didn't let one to bog down in snow. Therefore moving became easier, faster and more convenient. The oldest ski drawings come from 5000 years ago and were found in Rdy in Norway. The oldest ski were found in Sweden and are more than 3500 years old. Skis were also invented independently by tribes living on area of today's Iran around 2000 years before Christ. But due to weak construction of bindings it wasn't downhill (also called alpine) skiing, but crosscountry skiing, which didn't allow skier to go down the hill and turn. A breakthrough came in 50s of 19th century, when a Norwegian Sondre Norheim invented birch binding that that enabled skiers to ski without the risk of losing their skis. Fourty years later Austrian Matthias Zdarsky, called Father of Alpine Skiing, came up with better bindings, which were made of steel -the first to hold the foot in a stable position. They gave sufficient control ski faster. This led to birth of downhill skiing, and through the years it got so popular that nowadays it is a national sport of some countries. From

To

Skiing in the world Skiing is one of the most popular way of spending winter vacation and despite global warming it involves more and more people. The total number of skiers in the world is estimated to be around 200 million, most of them in Europe and USA. Excluding countries laying in the area between the tropics you can ski practically all over the world.

But even in countries which have hot climate and no mountains at all you can find indoor resorts, for example in Dubai.

Each season only in Europe approximately 201 million skier days are consumed (one day's downhill skiing with a SkiPass is considered one skier day). The second biggest market of alpine skiing is North America where are around 60 million skier days every year. Main powers in these days skiing (both in number of resorts and ski racing) are Austria, France, Switzerland, Italy and United States of America. I would like you to have a look at the charts on skiing popularity I've prepared.

Some numbers
60 50 40 30 20 13.8 10 2 0 Austria France Switzerland Italy Germany Poland USA 27.3 56.1 54 57

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number of skier days (in milions for season 2009/2010)

On the chart above you can see the numbers of skier days in the most important European skiing countries, Poland and USA. The most interesting thing is the fact that A Austria which is a small country has almost the same rate in skier days as huge United States!

350 300 250 200 150 100 50 0 3.2 8.2 Austria 12 64 2.8 7.5 5.8 82 58 12 38.5 0.77 15 USA Number of skiers Population 303

France Switzerland Italy

Germany Poland

Moreover, in this bar-chart we find out that Austria has also the most ski-oriented population around 40% citizens do ski! In Austrian newspapers skiing is always on the first page, pushing soccer in the place it should always be displayed- the end ;) The biggest number of skiers is in Germany and France. What's interesting is the fact that Germany has 12 million skiers but less than 14 million number of ski days, while France has the same number of skiers but it's number of skier days is four-times bigger. That means that Germans are big ski- tourists, and without them Austrian Audi dealers would go bankrupt soon ;) What about Poland? As you can see, only around 2% of Poles ski. What's the reason? There are several causes. I think that the most important is the cost of skiing in Poland. It's almost the same as in Alps, while Poles are earning 4 times less than citizens of France, Austria,

Switzerland or Germany. What's more, for the price you pay in Poland you get a service which is not as half good as in Alps (poor conditions on the slope, bad weather, only few and short slopes etc.), plus for free you can experience somebody's elbow in your ribs and have your skis scratched by kids who don't like to wait while you're standing for an hour in a queue to the wooden chair lift (for which it takes another hour to take you to the top of the hill).

Number of ski areas in Poland is quite big 72, but only 11 has more than 4 lifts. This proportion in Austria is 254 to 199, what shows that bigger resorts are simply more profitable. In my opinion Poland has big ski potential and if 'grale' will finally understand that they can make money on ski tourism, skiing in Poland will make sense. But now I prefer to pay a bit more and have way more fun in Austria, France or Italy. How about you?

Questions: 1. Do you like skiing or prefer snowboarding? Or maybe you hate winter? Why? 2. Do you agree with me about the reasons why skiing in Poland is not as popular as in Alpine countries? 3. What do you think about future of skiing?

Bibliography: http://corporate.skistar.com/templates/NormalPage.aspx?id=179 http://www.scribd.com/doc/49202491/RM-world-report-2010-VLV http://corporate.skistar.com/templates/NormalPage.aspx?id=179