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THE I might be easily moved, but there were a few tears when I read the stories from the fluoride factory that the last few decades have given me super slides and happy moments on the ski slope at times.
The stories were about the people still living around the Italian chemical manufacturer Miteni’s plant in Veneto, the disused factory that has effectively delivered most of the fluorine fast and bought the fun of skiing for the demanding market. Norwegian winter sports.
These were the stories of tired old workers with an overabundance of liver cancer, cirrhosis and lymphoma. About schoolchildren with very high levels of fluoride in the blood because the water they drank was contaminated and about the sudden local increase in stillborn children.
I mean, about all the human destruction left on that track glove which had the best glide.
The bright picture of the cracks of Norway
HE SAID the stories were written here at Dagbladet last fall and featured day after day in the renowned “Gliden’s Prize” series of articles.
You probably remember “Mama is going to die”, the heartbreaking and deeply personal story of Toril Stokkebø. A cross-country euthanized mother with cancer who used the last months of her life to warn of the potentially fatal consequences of fluoride lubrication.
Or the report on how coach Inge Bråten’s sudden successful death was linked to a steaming grease basement at her home in Jessheim, where she was working with the fastest fluoride products in sport.
And how this towering winner of the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics became another one of the many Norwegian cross-country and biathlon skiers who withered and lost their health trying to get top skis.
The clock stops the fluoride ban
MIDT In this revealing series of articles, the all-powerful President Gian-Franco Kasper shocked the International Ski Federation (FIS) by pushing for an immediate ban on the more toxic fluoride lubrication.
The ban came before anyone had developed a technical check to detect fluoride under skis and snowboards. Never before has a conservative international ski resort chosen such a radical solution. It made the International Biathlon Federation (IBU) hold on.
All snow sports suddenly said no to fluoride. The trailer was hard to believe, and then it was also temporarily halted:
From a purely sports policy point of view, the will to ditch fluoride lubrication is greater than ever. But the control system itself was not completed on time.
THE FLUORINE SCANDAL: She changed everything
THUS fluoride poison is still allowed to be used last winter, and many cheered:
– It’s like you don’t get candy, and then you get candy anyway, Biathlete Tiril Eckhoff explained to NRK and continued:
– It’s very strange, but it’s good for us and easier for our lubricators. They’ve been through hell since May, cleaning the bus and everything. Poor our butters.
But on Tiril’s definition of «hell» As the conclusion of the postponed fluoride ban remains, there is probably a bit more explanation left as to why this is more important than implementing good washing routines so that old fluoride residues are not mistaken for traps.
You fear more exposures to fluoride
FOR In this painful story of how much faster fluoride lubrication really costs, it’s not the actual cleaning that takes place in hell:
- That word only applies to those who have paid the price of the slide.
Exactly how many lives have been destroyed, we don’t know. There are some graves of children in Italy, far too long lists of factory workers with occupational injuries awaiting compensation, and hard-hitting stories about the health problems of our own ski lubricators.
But there is no complete and neat calculation whether it is worth continuing with the lubrication that provides the best glide.
THIS the case is not about mental arithmetic or calculated risk either. This applies to sport’s own willingness to bear the consequences of environmental and social health problems, which in their entirety are more than sufficiently scientifically documented.
In recent weeks, the Norwegian biathlon community has talked both about how expensive it is to throw away all toxic fluoride lubrication and about plans to fool international inspectors.
The goal has been to postpone the ban until it is possible to control compliance with the new rules.
The Norwegian biathletes have succeeded, but at the same time there has been too much noise. The sense of prohibition has been lost in the hustle and bustle of fairly mundane sporting challenges in skiing that have become too used to all the pitfalls.
That’s exactly not an achievement to brag about.
FOR Getting rid of toxic fluoride lubrication remains primarily an ethical issue. When ban comes next season, control and punitive reactions will develop along the way.
It is not those who wash their skis and equipment too much who will be punished.
Only all those who still cannot see that a good ski is something much more than what appears in the results lists.
And that real-world toxic fluoride lubrication is anything but candy.
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