Beijing 2022, the dirty Games of skiing

White is the colour of snow and purity. But nothing pure happened on the slopes that awarded the last available places at the Beijing Winter Olympics. At least three international races - Dubai, Kolašin and Malbun - were allegedly rigged to allow countries where it never snows to qualify a skier. This will expand the pool of participating nations, redistribute funds to national Olympic committees and potentially increase television rights revenues. On those ski slopes, outstanding athletes suddenly forgot how to ski, while amateurs obtained scores that even Alberto Tomba could not have matched back in his heyday. Fraud, bribe payments and death threats at the start gate. If this is still not clear enough, a huge scandal is sweeping through the Olympics less than 10 days from the opening ceremony. And it looks like it will cause trouble for many people.

The mysterious IOC communiqué

On 24 January, the International Olympic Committee issued a surprise statement announcing it had increased the Olympic quota of athletes admitted to Beijing by four, from 153 to 157. "The request came to us from the International Ski Federation (FIS)," explains the IOC, "because some qualifying events are currently under review." Which events are sub judice, and why, is not specified. However, it is said that "of the four extra places, two are going to Austria, one to Germany and one to France". Repubblica, thanks to exclusive documents and direct testimonies, is able to reveal the thorny issue behind the aseptic communiqué of the IOC and how, in the silence of the alpine ski federations and the national Olympic committees, it is shaking up the eve of the Games.

The indoor race in Dubai

The three suspicious events occurred at the indoor venue Ski Dubai (17-20 November), at the ski resort of Kolašin, Montenegro (22-23 December) and on the slopes of the Malbun resort in Liechtenstein (12-13 January). Let's start with Dubai. The competition is an Entry League, a much lower level than the World Championship competitions covered on TV. They are designed to give less-experienced athletes the chance to compete in an international race more within their reach and to gather a few points. An explanation is in order: in slalom and giant slalom, the higher the athlete's ranking, the fewer the points. A skier needs an average score of below 160 to be admitted to the Olympics, and any nation with a skier below this threshold is entitled to a place. For the sake of uniformity among competitions held around the world, the final score is weighted by the performances of the four best participants. Explanation over, so let us return to Ski Dubai, one of the largest indoor ski resorts on the planet, where there is a slope 80 metres wide and 400 metres long.

In the Entry League slalom races, 23 athletes participated, and the four top-ranked skiers underperformed, very far below their usual level. One of them is Federico Vietti, born in 1997 and registered by the Italian Winter Sports Federation (FISI): his ranking is 49.48, but on the track he gets 77.6, 79.3, 74.9, 73.1. You might think that's an unlucky streak. But the other three top skiers experienced the same failures: Belarusians Terzic and Lokmic, and Albanian Tola. As a result, India's Mohammad Arif Khan, Kyrgyzstan's Maksim Gordeev and Saudi Arabia's Salman Alhowaish - the first of his nation to obtain a place in the Winter Games - qualified for the Olympics.

The confidential report

"No athlete was able to repeat the same performance as in Dubai in the following races," reads one of the reports sent to the World Ski Federation, the IOC and the Italian FISI, the organizations that have opened an internal investigation. It points out that Gordeev, after the competition in Dubai, cancelled the following three he was due to take part in, and Alhowaish has made nine official ski descents in his whole life - all of them this season. The report, which compares qualifying times with tables and statistics, also identifies two more events in Montenegro and Liechtenstein that created more spots for the Olympic Games.

Death threats in Kolašin

Before Christmas, two championships, the national and junior nationals, were held in Kolašin, organised by the ski federations of two countries not usually associated with snow: Jamaica and East Timor. Austrian Pascal Hasler was the technical director, and only 31 athletes competed. Here, too, the best four skiers didn't do very well. Again, there is an Italian skier registered by FISI, Michele Gualazzi, born in 1994, his rank is 27.9, but he gets 53.41 and a scant 79.01. "Thanks to their performances being much lower than expected -   the report says - five athletes are considered eligible for Beijing, and Saudi Fayik Abdi, who has competed only 12 times in his whole career, automatically qualifies".

On Kolašin's snowy slopes, the password was "slow down". An underage skier taking part in the races to gather points, and not interested in making in to the Olympics, revealed how he received death threats from other athletes and team leaders because he was going too fast. Same story in Malbun, at an event organised by the Jamaican and Cape Verde ski federations. The report denounced blatant violations of federal regulations in the registration process, compensation to some participants and inexplicably disappointing performances by the top four athletes. Thanks to them, we will see Ghana's Carlos Maeder and Jamaica's Benjamin Alexander in Beijing.

The role of Fisi

"Over a dozen skiers were able to lower their scores two, three, five and even 8 times in less than three months," the report concludes. "Of these, 11 became eligible for Beijing. Many of them have never competed before this season and will not compete again. Those places have been taken away from real athletes who worked all their life to get to the Games, and they should be given back to them."

The case is open. It is not clear why the IOC, faced with the evidence of possible fraud, did not contest the results of the races under investigation and bar skiers from participating who got their place through fraud. The role of FISI remains to be understood. Vietti and Gualazzi are Italian members of the federation. Why did they participate in pointless races? Were they asked to provide an explanation? If the three competitions were invalidated, Italy would automatically gain an eighth place and could bring Mattia Casse or Riccardo Tonetti to Beijing. Yesterday, we tried calling Flavio Roda, president of FISI. But the phone just kept ringing.

(translated by Barbara Bacci)