Cold comfort for snowboarders

Date: 23/01/1997

By Simon Coss

SNOWBOARD instructors are emerging as the latest victims of an ongoing battle over the mutual recognition of qualifications to teach winter sports.

In what is being seen as a test case in Italy, snowboard instructor Nicola Carta is facing court action for teaching the new sport a kind of mountain skateboarding without possessing a recognised qualification from an approved Italian ski school.

Carta is authorised by the Italian snowboard federation to teach the sport and works for the Professional Snowboarding School. But according to the Italian authorities, only qualified ski instructors can give lessons and consequently Carta was recently arrested on the slopes after a tip-off from angry skiing traditionalists.

Paolo Fazi, head of the Professional Snowboarding School, is furious at Carta's treatment and contests the proposition that snowboarding and skiing are linked.

“The two are completely different. It is like saying windsurfing and sailing are the same. Snowboarding will be recognised at the next Olympics as an exhibition sport, so it is clear that it is seen internationally as separate from skiing,” he said, adding that he would petition MEPs to look into the issue if Carta loses her case.

Snowboarders, with their breakneck on-piste stunts, are not everyone's favourite Alpine companions. In France, one parliamentarian is proposing a bill which would force them to use separate slopes, claiming that snowboarders are now responsible for 75&percent; of on-piste collisions.

Officially, however, Paris seems to have no clear policy on the sport. “I am not aware of an official line on this, but personally it seems obvious to me that as snowboarders and skiers use the same pistes, the instructors should also have an understanding of normal skiing,” said one official.

Meanwhile, problems remain for EU ski instructors trying to work in another member state, despite assurances late last year from the European Commission that the issue would be resolved before the start of the skiing season.

Critics claim that the Commission has caved in to pressure from entrenched ski lobby groups in certain countries, notably France, and conceded a loophole in internal market rules which will effectively allow regional authorities to favour national teachers.

France argues that as skiing conditions differ from resort to resort, it should be allowed to impose an extra test on non-local ski instructors before they start teaching.

Despite tough talk last year, including threats of possible action in the European Court of Justice, Internal Market Commissioner Mario Monti seems to have given way.

In the provisional text of a communication the Commission is planning to release, it states: “the host member state can, in certain cases laid down in the directive, ask [the prospective ski instructor] to complete a training period or submit to an aptitude test”.

Groups representing non-national ski instructors wanting to work in France are furious at what they see as the Commissioner's capitulation.

“We do not think the Commission has been fighting for us. We deserve a result and it would make a big difference if we could get one within the next month,” said Peter Kuwall of the British Association of Ski Instructors (BASI).