As winter athletes raise the alarm about how global heating is affecting their sports, advocates say that many choose silence due to barriers like sponsorships, cultural landscapes, and self-doubt.

“Athletes are definitely concerned about climate change affecting future Winter Olympics,” Natalie Knowles, research coordinator at Protect Our Winters Canada, told The Energy Mix. “For athletes that want to perform their best on the world stage, having slushy snow, shortened courses, rain, or coming into competitions unprepared because of a shortened training season is a real concern.”

As human-produced atmospheric emissions alter weather conditions worldwide, many regions have been experiencing winter conditions that are too mild to support winter sports like skiing, snowboarding, or skating. This climatic shift became obvious during the last Winter Olympics in Beijing, when China was forced to rely on artificial snowmaking for the events.

Looking ahead, fewer and fewer cities will be able to offer winter conditions that allow for fair and safe competition as global temperatures rise. Protect Our Winters projects that only one city among the hosts of past winter games will be a reliable venue by the end of this century, if global emissions continue to rise on their present course.

Ironically, sports competitions themselves are a significant emissions source. As Knowles points out in her research, the US$512-billion global sport industry emits 300 to 500 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent each year—or enough to be on par with a top-25 emitting country—when calculated as proportional to global GDP. Other research puts the total at 350 megatonnes. The industry is also rife with funding from fossil fuel and other extractive companies, with one recent report “easily” identifying 107 high-carbon sponsorship deals with skiing organizations, event organizers, teams, and individual athletes. The list includes mining giant Teck Resources’ sponsorship of the Canadian National Ski team.

Knowles says athletes may push back against pressure to advocate for social and environmental issues like climate change, but many others are advocating for solutions.

“Olympic athletes are starting to feel more comfortable speaking out about climate change,” she said, pointing to a letter led by Austrian downhill skier Julien Schutter. In the letter, Schutter and nearly 200 other athlete co-signatories called on the International Ski and Snowboard Federation to demand the organization take action on climate change.

“In other situations, athletes can feel pressured to not speak out about climate change, due to team or personal sponsors that are directly involved in the fossil fuel sector,” notes Knowles.

Other experts, like Sport Ecology Group founder Dr. Madeleine Orr, agree that athletes face barriers to climate advocacy.

Athletes are “hemmed in a little bit because there are some serious barriers to speaking up on this,” Orr told The Independent. “You’re potentially risking funding, you’re potentially risking embarrassing people that you work with. It’s a very fine line to get your message across in a soundbite without stepping on someone.”

Knowles’ points to other factors that manifest on “a more personal level.”

“Many athletes feel imposter syndrome—that they aren’t educated enough to speak out about climate change and worry about saying the wrong thing,” Knowles told The Mix.

In some cases, athletes may also feel hypocritical about having a lifestyle that is carbon intensive—primarily from flying to sporting events—so they might “fear they will face repercussions in their reputation for speaking out about climate change.”