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Throwing yourself at 100 km/h down a ski slope blind and listening to music

BarcelonaWhen you ski down a slope, you can reach over 100 km/h. If it’s already dizzying for any skier, it’s even more impressive when you’re blind. But for decades, many sight-impaired skiers have been competing on the snow, where they are happy, with the help of guides who descend right in front of them and help them by voice. A special connection, a teamwork. Now two Italians have taken the experience a little further by introducing music. It’s not a game, no. They do it to compete better. In fact, that’s how they won.

The Espot station is currently home to the Alpine Paraski World Cup organized by the International Ski Federation (FIS), where different blind skiers compete in the disciplines of slalom, giant slalom, combined alpine, supergiant, downhill and parallel slalom The guide always walks in front of the skier and usually uses a wireless intercom when the skier has some vision: so he can follow his voice and instructions. When dealing with total blind skiers, the guide usually carries a megaphone on his back so that he can be followed by the runner.

The exception these days has been the Italian Chiara Mazzel, who is 26 years old and lives in the Dolomites. When he started skiing at the age of 5 he could still see. But at 18 he lost 95% of his vision and stopped snow sports, until at 23 he decided to ski again. Shortly after, she was already with the Italian Paralympic team and, in fact, she was proclaimed champion in the super-giant women’s category in Espot. And he did it accompanied by Fabrizio Casal, his guide. For just over a year, both have been communicating through a system designed by them to respond to their needs. Unlike the devices used by other blind athletes who have also participated in the World Cup, theirs is a system based on music. Chiara chooses several songs according to the rhythm she prefers at any given moment or in each race. These songs are played on a box-shaped device that the guide wears on the lower back. The device plays the music with great power and, even more importantly, in Chiara’s direction.

The box that Fabrizio is carrying has a tube-shaped membrane that makes the sound very directional, allowing Chiara to follow the right line at all times. The direction and depth of the sound are essential for Chiara to know exactly where her guide is and what her inclination is, because this is what determines the trajectory she has to follow. In this sense, Mazzel explains: “Thanks to this device I have achieved very significant improvements both technically and from the point of view of the stopwatch. It’s as if he saw it, but through his ears.” Fabrizio is proud of the work done: “I come from Val di Fiemme, in Trentino. I live very close to Chiara and I’ve been part of the Paralympic team for seven years. I’ve been skiing since I was 5, so there’s never I haven’t had a year that I’ve stopped and I’ve always been competing since I was 8. And as soon as I stopped competing I started being a guide. Basically, we’ve worked out a system that allows us to make Chiara understand if she’s following the right line, i.e. if he follows me or if I’ve chosen to go outside. This helps both us to coordinate and to trust Chiara, while also making her feel comfortable because she notices that the person is always in front of her, it’s always there and clearly helps him make decisions.”

A long way

The first time visually impaired skiers competed was at the 1980 Paralympic Games in Geilo, Norway, but only in the cross-country skiing category. Back then it was considered too dangerous for a blind person to do alpine skiing, but many of the skiers who took part in that first meeting organized demonstrations on alpine ski slopes to show that they could do it too. In 1984, at the Paralympic Games in Innsbruck, alpine skiing for the visually impaired was made official for the first time. Currently, there are three sports in the Winter Olympics that have categories for the visually impaired: alpine skiing, cross-country skiing, and biathlon, a sport that combines cross-country skiing and shotgun shooting. In Catalonia, the first training sessions took place in the 90s.

“Guides are not really professionals, I mean, I can’t make a living, I don’t make enough money to live as a guide, it’s not a full-time job for me. But there are guides from other nations who are professional athletes and that they can live off it,” says Fabrizio.

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