Bakuriani Cross inspection highly successful

On September 20, the FIS Cross World Cup Race Directors Uwe Beier and Klaus Waldner together with their Assistant Race Directors Alberto Schiavon (SBX) and Christian Cretier (SX) travelled to Bakuriani (GEO) for a summer inspection of the upcoming Audi FIS Ski Cross World Cup, which will take place on February 06-07, 2021. It will also be the official test event for the upcoming FIS Freestyle Ski, Snowboard and Freeski World Championships Bakuriani 2023.

The FIS Delegation was accompanied by the course builders and designers Nicolas Vaudroz and Thomas Besse-Giraldo, as well as by the international experts Davide Cerato and Arrigo Bini.

After having successfully passed a negative PCR Test (which then had to be repeated every 72h due to Georgia’s Covid-19 safety measures) at the airport of Tbilisi, the team continued their journey to the WSC venue of Bakuriani 2023.

On site, the FIS delegation worked really intensely with the representatives of the local organizing committee consisting of Zurab Kostava, President of the Georgian Ski Federation (GSF), Levan Metreveli, Head of the Freestyle Committee of the GSF, Luka Eloshvili, also member of the GSF and Guram Vashakmadze, representative of the Mountain Resort Development Company (MRDC).
The main focus was the layout of the World Cup and WSC course, where a lot of great work regarding the preparations for the course had already been done, including some detailed ground work.

The representatives of the MRDC assured that all necessary technical work on the slope (installing snow making machines, finishing the necessary ground work and cleaning the line for the slope, etc.) will be finished until December 2020.

At the end of the inspection, the course designers and builders Nicolas Vaudroz and Thomas Besse-Giraldo managed to finalize and draft the course design for the World Championship course 2023.

At the same time, various meetings were held together with the local organizing committee, in which administrative and organizational matters were discussed, as well as the staff and material requirements for the upcoming Audi FIS Ski Cross World Cup and the first ever Ski Cross Mixed Team World Cup event, which was recently confirmed by the LOC.
This is the first step to implement the SX Mixed Team event into a future World Championships and Olympic Winter Games Programme, which is a clearly declared goal by the FIS Cross Race Directors.

The FIS Delegation left Bakuriani with an outstandingly positive impression on September 25 to get home in time for the annual FIS Autumn meetings, which due to the given circumstances are being held online throughout this whole week.