Several of the best known names in Alpine skiing have highlighted the rapid decline of the world’s glaciers. Lindsey Vonn, Mikaela Shiffrin and Italy’s Federica Brignone are among those warning that the accelerating loss of ice is reshaping both mountain environments and the future of their sport in a piece for the Associated Press.

Winter Olympic hosts Cortina offered a stark backdrop for their concerns. Glaciers that were once visible from the town have retreated to high, jagged ridgelines, leaving only small remnants on peaks such as Cristallo and Sorapiss. Anyone hoping to see a substantial glacier must travel to the Marmolada, long regarded as the Dolomites’ flagship ice mass and itself shrinking at speed.

For elite skiers, glaciers have traditionally provided reliable summer training conditions. Vonn first trained on Austrian glaciers as a child, but says many of those venues have now disappeared. Shiffrin notes that the issue is central to the sport’s identity and argues that meaningful policy shifts are needed if glacier skiing is to have a long‑term future.

Scientific assessments reinforce the athletes’ observations. Italian glaciologist Antonella Senese reports that Italy has lost more than 200 square kilometres of glacier area since the late 1950s, with the rate of decline accelerating over the past two decades. The Cristallo and Sorapiss glaciers have shrunk by roughly one‑third since the early 1960s, according to national inventories.

Brignone, who lives in the Valle d’Aosta, says the changes she sees each season extend far beyond sport. As glaciers retreat to higher elevations, she worries primarily about the broader environmental consequences rather than the availability of ski terrain.

Researchers at the University of Innsbruck have attempted to make those consequences more visible through the Goodbye Glaciers Project, which models how different warming scenarios affect glacier volume worldwide. The Cristallo and Sorapiss glaciers are now too small to be included. Marmolada, meanwhile, has halved in size over 25 years and suffered a deadly collapse in 2022. Under a 2.7°C warming scenario, it could be largely gone by 2034; limiting warming to 1.5°C could extend its life by several years and preserve around 100 Alpine glaciers.

Globally, studies estimate that more than 7 trillion tons of ice have melted since 2000, with implications that go way beyond winter sports to water supplies and mountain safety.

Brignone told the Associated Press that when she sees how glaciers are retreating to higher elevations at her home in Italy’s Aosta Valley she’s not thinking about the future of skiing, she’s concerned for the future of the planet.