With climate change affecting winter sports, snowmaking has become essential.<\/b>
\nDavide Cerato will play a major role in skiing and snowboarding events at the upcoming Olympics, but he won\u2019t be competing.
The Italian snowmaking expert is responsible for perfecting several of the courses that will feature in the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Games, and he takes his job seriously.
\u201cIt\u2019s the most important race of their life,\u201d Cerato said. \u201cOur duty is to give them the best, to deliver the best courses where they can perform their best after training so hard.\u201d
Cerato oversees operations at venues where new snowmaking systems were installed, including in Bormio for Alpine ski racing and ski mountaineering, and in Livigno for freestyle skiing and snowboarding events. He has been working with the International Ski and Snowboard Federation and the International Olympic Committee since the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
These days, manufactured snow \u2014 \u201ctechnical snow\u201d as Cerato calls it \u2014 is a way of life in ski racing, so much so that Olympic athletes don\u2019t think twice about competing on it. Above all else, they want a course that will hold up over multiple training runs and the races themselves without becoming too mushy or rutted.
Mother Nature can\u2019t always provide for that, and with climate change affecting winter sports in particular, snowmaking has become essential.New reservoirs and snow guns
The organizing committee estimates the Games will need roughly 250 million gallons of water, the equivalent of nearly 380 Olympic swimming pools, for snowmaking. Cerato oversaw the work to carve out new high-elevation water reservoirs to store it.
At the Livigno Snow Park, they built a basin capable of holding about 53 million gallons of water. It\u2019s now one of the biggest reservoirs on the Italian side of the Alps, Cerato said. They added more than 50 snow guns there to produce about 211 million gallons of snow in roughly 300 hours.
In Bormio, Cerato said they constructed a lake at an elevation of 2,515 yards to hold 23 million gallons of water. They also added 75 snow guns for Alpine skiing and ski mountaineering.
\u201cWe brought the Bormio slope to a new level,\u201d he said, comparing it to a \u201cFerrari with new gears.\u201dEnsuring fair, safe courses
He said it\u2019s easier to work with technical snow because it\u2019s compact and is safer because it doesn\u2019t deteriorate as quickly, whereas natural snow requires more work. They can inject water deep into the snowpack, which will freeze and create a more stable race surface.
\u201cWe can deliver better, safer and fair courses,\u201d he said. \u201cThat is the difference \u2014 a fair course from bib No. 1 to bib No. 50.\u201dUsing snowmaking sensor technology
Cerato and his team are using state-of-the-art sensors to monitor the snow depth. If there\u2019s a gap, snow guns go to work. If there\u2019s too much, they are turned off.
\u201cIt automatically adjusts everything, each snow gun, so you can control with just one person sitting in the office, all the mountain,\u201d Cerato said.
In Bormio, snow groomers are also equipped with GPS systems to help monitor the snow quality and levels, saving time, energy and water.
The snow groomer knows exactly where to push the snow and how much snow is needed. And at the same time, \u201cyou produce the minimum amount of snow that you need,\u201d Cerato said. \u201cThis is a powerful tool.\u201d
Preparing a slope for elite competition isn\u2019t the same as doing it for commercial use. For the latter, natural snow is precious, he said. Personally, he prefers skiing in powder.
\u201cI was born on the mountain,\u201d he said. \u201cI love snow.\u201d<\/p>\n