Once Ski-mad Austria Split On Pistes Open In Lockdown

Semmering, Austria, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 24th Jan, 2021 ) :On the surface, the Austrian ski resort of Semmering looks to have adapted well to the coronavirus pandemic.

Loudspeakers exhort skiers lining up in orderly queues to wear FFP2 masks and respect distancing measures.

But whatever the precautions, the fact that some Austrians are skiing at all has prompted the ire of others stuck indoors during the country's third coronavirus lockdown, despite the country's reputation as a "ski nation".

Among those hitting the pistes is businessman Robert Buchmeyer, an avid skier since he was six.

With hotels still shut to all but businesses travellers, he had to scrap his annual week-long ski vacation.

He has instead turned to day trips to some of the country's 250 ski resorts, always equipped with the FFP2 mask now mandatory on lifts.

"It's good for one's health, being outdoors in the fresh air, and it's not like there's much else we can do," Buchmeyer told AFP, the clasp of his ski boots snapping in the parking lot of the historic ski town of Semmering, nestled on the easternmost reaches of the Alps an hour from Vienna.

Images of cramped queues for lifts at resorts and virus clusters at ski spots have troubled many since they first opened.

The Alpine fun has outraged urbanites homeschooling their children in small apartments and isolated from their friends and family.

- Emotional decision - "It's really become massively divisive," says former Olympic skier and retired skiing educator Nicola Werdenigg.

"Skiing has long been used to form the national identity, and right now, if people are rejoicing over how great skiing is, while a mother with three kids is forced to stay inside her apartment and can't even go to the zoo, of course that hurts and makes people angry," she says.

Werdenigg says she won't ski this winter to show solidarity -- a decision she would have also expected politicians to impose across the European Union.

In contrast to other ski destinations like France which took a harder line, Austria did allow its lifts to reopen for locals on Christmas Eve.

Many suspect that economic considerations played into the decision to keep lifts open.

The politically well-connected ski industry generates around 3 percent of national GDP, according to the Austrian Institute of Economic Research.

But the decision was also a deeply emotional one, says Rudolf Muellner, a sport historian at the University of Vienna.

After Austria was transformed from a major empire to a rump state by the shocks of the 20th century, Muellner says skiing gave the country "the chance to present itself on a world stage", becoming an "engine of identity".

Post-war Austria established dominance in the sport and a rapidly growing middle class flocked to resorts to emulate daredevil professionals.

Teenage girls decorated their bedrooms with life-size posters of skiers, who could look forward to post-retirement reincarnations as popular singers, movie stars or tv hosts.