Lindsey Vonn, Mikaela Shiffrin, and other elite skiers competing at the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics are raising alarm about the accelerating melt of the world’s glaciers, saying the warming climate threatens the high-altitude ice where their sport depends. The athletes’ warnings come from host city Cortina d’Ampezzo, where glaciers once visible from town have dramatically shrunk, with many reduced to tiny patches of ice at high elevations in the Dolomites.
The world’s top skiers train on glaciers for the high-quality snow there, but warming jeopardizes the future of their sport and the mountainous regions that depend on glaciers for water. Italy has lost more than 200 square kilometers of glacier area since the late 1950s, according to glaciologist Antonella Senese of the University of Milan.
Vonn, 41, who started skiing on glaciers in Austria at age 9, spoke from direct experience. “Most of the glaciers that I used to ski on are pretty much gone,” she said at a prerace press conference in Cortina before competing in the Olympic downhill. “So that’s very real and it’s very apparent to us.”
Skiers Sound the Alarm
Shiffrin, who became the first American skier to win three Alpine gold medals when she captured Wednesday’s slalom title, said athletes enjoy a unique vantage point. “As athletes in snow sports, we get a real front-row view” to the monumental changes, she said after racing. “It is something that’s very close to our heart, because it is the heart and soul of what we do.”
She expressed cautious hope despite her uncertainty. “I would really, really like to believe and hope that with strong voices and sort of broader policy changes within companies and governments, there is a hope for a future of our sport. But I think right now, it’s a little bit of a … it’s a question.”
Evidence from the Mountains
The numbers underscore the urgency. Glaciers visible from Cortina have become mostly inaccessible. About 50 kilometers away, the Marmolada glacier—one of Italy’s largest and the largest in the Dolomites—exemplifies the accelerating loss. The University of Padua documented that the glacier was halved over 25 years.
According to the Goodbye Glaciers Project, a visualization tool created by the University of Innsbruck to track how warming changes glacier ice levels, Marmolada is expected to be mostly gone by 2034 if the world warms 2.7 degrees Celsius (4.9 Fahrenheit). But the outcome is not fixed.
“If warming is limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) — the international goal — the glacier’s life could be extended by another six years, and around 100 glaciers in the Alps can be saved,” said Patrick Schmitt, a doctoral student at the University of Innsbruck.
Schmitt wrote in an email: “Cutting greenhouse gas emissions now will reduce future ice loss and soften the impacts on people and nature. The choices we make in this decade will decide how much ice remains in the Dolomites, across the Alps, and around the world.”
The acceleration is documented. Senese, the University of Milan glaciologist, said: “We are observing a continuous and uninterrupted decrease in glacier area and volume. In the last one to two decades, this reduction has clearly accelerated.”
Nearby mountain peaks tell the story in detail. The 2015 New Italian Glacier Inventory found that glaciers on Cristallo and Sorapiss mountains had shrunk by about one-third compared to the 1959-1962 inventory.
Federica Brignone, an Italian skier who won a second gold medal Sunday at her home Winter Olympics, lives six hours away in the Valle d’Aosta, where major glaciers retreat higher each year. When she sees how glaciers are retreating to higher elevations, Brignone said she’s not thinking about the future of skiing—she’s concerned for the future of the planet.
“There we have a lot of glaciers, but they are going up and up, every year, more and more,” she told AP.
Other Olympic skiers echoed the alarm. Noa Szollos, competing for Israel, said the state of nearby glaciers reflects the global situation. “I hope we can do something about it,” she said, “but it’s a hard time.”
Finland’s Silja Koskinen reported she cannot train on some glaciers she used to because of crevices, rocks and flowing water. Team USA skier AJ Hurt described the seasonal progression as troubling.
“Every year, I feel like we come and there’s a little less snow. And every time, we’re like, are we really going to start in October? There’s no snow here,’” Hurt told AP. “It is really sad and it’s hard to ignore in this sport, definitely, when we’re around it so much and it is so clear.”
The loss extends far beyond Europe. More than 7 trillion tons of ice (6.5 trillion metric tons) has been lost since 2000, according to a study last year. As glaciers disappear, the consequences extend far beyond athletics—threatening water sources, increasing mountain hazards, and contributing to sea level rise.
Pushing for Climate Action
Norwegian skier Nikolai Schirmer is leading an effort to halt fossil fuel company sponsorships of winter sports, recognizing that burning coal, oil and gas is the largest contributor to global climate change. Team USA skier River Radamus described the athlete perspective.
“It’s always present in our mind that we’re on a dangerous trend unless we do something right,” Radamus said.