No to travel to Azerbaijan, Flavio Roda tough

Flavio Roda tough

The Italian national ski mountaineering team will not take part in the World Cup races scheduled in Azerbaijan for Jan. 10, 11 and 13. The stage è arose from a change to the international calendars, which was only taken over during the Ismf (International Ski Mountaineering Federation) plenary meeting held in Baku last Oct. 12-13, when the schedules of the various teams were already closed.

Courchevel (Fra)’s renunciation of a competition made Ismf take the decision to make up for it in Azerbaijan, adding for’an additional competition that resulted in a week-long trip, from’January 8 to 14, not budgeted for at the beginning of the season.

"International Federations facilitate and support teams and athletes: this is what FIS (alpine skiing, cross-country skiing, freestyle, snowboarding, jumping and Nordic combined), Ibu (biathlon), Fil (luge) and Ibsf (bobsleigh and skeleton) do, which is not the case with Ismf": this is how the President of the Italian Winter Sports Federation, Flavio Roda, justified the choice.

"That in Azerbaijan, turned into a very onerous trip – added the technical director of the National Team, Fabio Meraldi – which saw times and costs rise as the days passed. And all this was outside the budgets budgeted by all the teams. For these reasons, Italy has decided not to participate in the competitions".