Switzerland wins the medals table at the Freestyle World Championships in the Engadin with nine medals. Financially, this results in a minus, which is seen as an investment in tourism and infrastructure.
Five gold, one silver and three bronze: this is the haul of Swiss athletes at the home World Championships. Ski crossers Ryan Regez and Fanny Smith won three gold medals at the championships in the Engadin. Freeskier Mathilde Gremaud triumphed in slopestyle, Noé Roth for the second time on the aerials hill. There was only one Swiss medal in the snowboarding disciplines, that of Sina Siegenthaler and Valerio Jud in the mixed snowboard cross competition.
In 2023, ten medals were won in Bakuriani, three of which were gold. Switzerland thus maintained its high level in the Engadin. However, the trend that Switzerland is a freestyle stronghold but no longer a snowboarding nation continued. While the alpine snowboarders around Julie Zogg and Dario Caviezel had won four medals in Georgia two years ago, this time they were left with 4th and 5th places after two complicated years.
"In skicross everything went for us, in alpine snowboarding everything went against us," Sacha Giger, the freestyle director of Swiss-Ski, told SRF. Otherwise, expectations were met. "We are very well positioned and have great teams. We've also had a lot of consistency in the coaching area for two years now. With a view to the 2026 Olympic Games, we now need to focus more on the elite," continued Giger.
Engadine rejuvenation
From an organizational point of view, the Freestyle World Championships should be seen as an investment. The budget amounted to around 20 million francs and a loss of around two million francs is expected. The overriding aim of Engadin Tourism is to give St. Moritz and the region a new freestyle spirit, to unite the high gloss of St. Moritz with the young freestyle clientele. "It's about rejuvenating the target audience, a healthy mix between regular customers and a young audience," says Jan Steiner from Engadin Tourismus.
Last but not least, the World Championships ensured full hotel beds and restaurants in the otherwise difficult spring business and opened up valuable additional training opportunities and further home World Cups for Swiss freestyle athletes thanks to the new premium infrastructure.
It was expected that this would result in a financial loss. According to Milan Derouck, CEO of the major event, the fact that this will be higher than budgeted in the best-case scenario is due on the one hand to the capricious weather conditions, which forced changes to the program in the first week. On the other hand, changes to the regulations since the 2018 planning required greater effort and the number of athletes and staff members was higher than expected at 1,800.
Pictures instead of an audience
However, it is also true that the number of spectators remained comparatively low despite the supporting program with concerts. 15,000 tickets costing around 100 francs were sold. By comparison, around 80,000 tickets were sold for the Biathlon World Championships in Lenzerheide. Jan Steiner emphasized that this was expected. "Our goal was clearly to produce television images and broadcast them to the world."