The death of Italian ski racer Matteo Franzoso during a downhill training run in La Parva, Chile, has unleashed a wave of grief and a growing chorus of demands for change in how the sport—and specifically the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) manages risk. Franzoso, 25, died September 19 after a high-speed fall durung downhill training—an accident that has sharpened scrutiny on training tracks, safety infrastructure, and the responsibilities of not just the Italian Ski Federation FISI, but also global organization FIS.
Earlier this week, the skier’s body was flown home to Italy and honored at a funeral in Sestriere, where he had grown up and first learned to ski. In the week since, athletes (past and present), coaches, and advocacy groups have spoken with unusual urgency about what must change if ski racing is to avoid more tragedies. It is the fourth death of a young athlete during training in the last 12 months and the third on the Italian team.
“No Excuse for Doing Less”
Lucrezia Lorenzi, sister of Mathilde Lorenzi, who died during training in October 2024 at Val Senales, Italy, called for immediate action. Lorenzi—a ski racer herself—wrote on her Instagram page: “The time has come to stop! The words fate and bad luck do not appear in the vocabulary of a professional athlete. You can’t go skiing and never go home again.”
Italian teammate Guglielmo Bosca said racers have long understood that downhill carries lethal risk, but the safety standards at some training venues fall short. “At 140 kilometers per hour, the consequences are not just a broken bone,” he said, adding that while risk cannot be eliminated, “there is no excuse for doing less than what is possible to improve safety.”
Retired Italian ski racer Lara Magoni criticized how equipment and course preparation have evolved at a pace that has not been matched by safety set ups at training. She argued that highly reactive carving skis and harder, icier track surfaces leave athletes little margin for error. She recalled earlier decades when skis and snow preparation allowed more room to recover from mistakes. “The performance is higher today,” she said, “but so is the risk.”
Coaches and Officials Demand Investment
Sepp Brunner, who has been national coach for both the Swiss and the Austrian teams, said training venues outside the World Cup often lack adequate protective barriers, with outdated B-nets leaving racers exposed. He contrasted that with Copper Mountain in Colorado, which he described as the only training site consistently meeting high standards. However, the problem is that summer training is not possible at Copper Mountain, leaving a large gap for downhill training during the summer in preparation for the World Cup season.
Liechtenstein’s Marco Büchel, a former World Cup star, called on FIS to create a dedicated fund to help ski areas upgrade safety measures. “We are talking about maybe two dozen speed tracks in the world,” he said, “but many are not safe enough.”
Even FIS CEO Urs Lehmann acknowledged concerns and shared a rather personal story of visiting La Parva with his daughter. He told reporters that after seeing the training slope, he deemed it too risky for her to train there. Lehmann said the federation is studying proposals but warned that raising all training venues to World Cup standards would require significant resources.
It’s a point that Marcus Wasmeier also hones in on. The retired German ski racer points out the biggest problem in the security debate: the financial constraint of implementing stricter safety measures on training routes, stating that “the [national] associations cannot do this. That would be impossible to finance.” The double Olympic gold medal winner from the 1994 Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, estimated that it takes about “15 to 20 kilometers of nets would have to be built”—a cost national ski associations would not be able to carry.
As a solution to this problem, proposals have come forward to declare certain dedicated slopes as downhill training slopes each season. The netting and safety measures on those courses are supposed to be vetted by FIS and the cost financed largely by FIS rather than resorts or national ski associations.
A U.S. Voice Pushes for Global Standards
The most forceful call came this week from the Kelly Brush Foundation (KBF), a Vermont-based nonprofit founded after Kelly Brush was paralyzed in a 2006 ski racing crash. In a letter sent September 23 to FIS President Johan Eliasch and the federation’s council, the foundation urged the creation of an international safety audit committee and offered to share practices developed in the United States. “For 20 years we have worked to change the culture of ski racing safety in the U.S., making it a priority, not an afterthought,” the foundation wrote. It noted its support for more than 200 clubs through safety training and over 100 miles of netting purchases.
Among its recommendations: expand safety education for coaches and athletes, and extend protections beyond racecourses to training slopes, “where athletes spend the majority of their time.” Tiger Shaw, former CEO of U.S. Ski & Snowboard and now a KBF board member, said FIS must act decisively. “We in the U.S. have embraced Kelly and the KBF’s leadership and successfully changed how we think about and implement safety at home,” he said. “This should be a global standard.”
What Comes Next
With the Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics approaching, the pressure on FIS is mounting. Franzoso’s death has revived memories of past tragedies, from Ulrike Maier in 1994 to more recent training accidents, and raised pointed questions: Who is responsible for ensuring safe conditions when athletes train at high speed? And how much risk is acceptable in a sport built on pushing limits?
FIS shared an open letter last week in which the organization stated that the pursuit of performance must never outweigh safety, stressing that while alpine skiing’s risks can never be eliminated, they can be reduced through dialogue and collective action. FIS called for a “culture in which safety is integral to every decision,” involving athletes, coaches, federations, and organizers alike. The federation highlighted ongoing work with its Athletes Health Unit to advance protective technologies such as airbags, electronically triggered bindings, and multi-impact helmets, while pledging to intensify discussions with stakeholders in the coming weeks.
For Franzoso’s grieving teammates, reform is the only way to honor his memory. For national ski federations and FIS, it is now a test of whether words will be matched by action.
