Imagine a situation where you are the maintenance manager of the Finnish cross country team. Your available budget for one season is 200,000 euros.
The federation in charge of international competitions assures you that a new rule will be introduced for the next season, which will fundamentally change the nature of the sport. Preparing for the change eats up 35,000 euros from your budget during the season.
But when the investment is made and the rule should come into force, the association informs you that the plan for the new rule will be delayed by a year.
Next, imagine repeating this three years in a row.
The above-mentioned description is not fiction, but a quote from the former maintenance manager of the Finnish cross country team by Martin Norrgård everyday life in the 2020–2021 season. At that time, the national skiing teams were preparing for the ban launched by the International Ski Federation FIS, which prevents the use of fluorine creams with superior performance in skiing.
In this story, Norrgård opens up about how much preparation for the fluoride ban ate up his budget. In the bigger picture, the account is made by the executive director of the Ski Association Ismo Hämäläinen and a German technology expert Karlheinz Waibel.
– The fluoride ban is by far the most miserably managed process in the history of the FIS, which I have had to participate in, Waibel says.
The fluoride ban affects all ski and board sports under FIS. The International Biathlon Union IBU is also involved in the process. However, in this story, the effects of the ban are discussed only from the point of view of cross-country skiing.
Since three years have already passed since FIS’s decision to ban fluorine products from its competitions, it is appropriate to summarize briefly what the saga is about.
Rule without supervision
In the spring of 2020, numerous cream and equipment manufacturers, officials of national federations and maintenance managers, as well as an external research body, told Urheilu’s extensive report that it is not possible to implement a fluoride ban in the one-year window announced by FIS. It would take years rather.
When three years have passed since the fluoride ban was announced, practically nothing has changed: the skis of every skier competing at the absolute top have been lubricated with fluoride creams in the past three years – and will be lubricated this season as well.
Reason: FIS has not developed a reliable test device to monitor the ban. It hasn’t stopped the international skiing decision-makers from announcing every year that, despite one season’s postponement, the fluoride ban will come into effect the following season.
Although the final result of the use of fluorides has not changed for the time being, waddling with the ban has caused the national federations an expense that is calculated for each major ski country in the hundreds of thousands of euros. The sums are huge for a sport that doesn’t revolve around money anyway.
“This is how you burn money”
– 130,000–140,000 euros, Karlheinz Waibel, who is responsible for technology development at the German Ski Association, answers the question of how much the fluoride ban has brought in additional costs for his employer on an annual basis.
The term additional cost may ring a bell in many ears, because the development of ski creams is a natural part of the sport. According to Waibel, however, we can talk about the extra because FIS kept a low profile for a long time regarding the development of a device that tests fluoride concentrations.
This, in turn, forced the national associations to play with two cards. By playing with two cards, Waibel refers to the declaration repeated by the FIS three years ago that the fluoride ban will come into force next season, which in turn obliged the national federations to prepare for the change in addition to their normal work.
The majority of the extra costs mentioned by Waibel come from the two employees the union has harnessed to research and test fluoride-free creams.
Waibel emphasizes that neither he nor the German Ski Federation has anything against a fluoride ban. However, according to the German, it was clear from the beginning that the FIS board did not understand what it was doing when it decided on the fluoride ban.
In order for FIS’s goal of a fluoride ban to be realized, its hopes rest on the shoulders of a US company. The company is currently developing an algorithm that monitors the use of fluoride for its existing device. More on the topic later in this article, but the important information here is the price of the device.
– It is 30,000 euros per piece, Waibel says.
National federations would have to buy several devices so that they could monitor the implementation of the fluoride ban in the competitions organized in their country.
The German Ski Federation has recently purchased two devices to be able to ensure their reliability.
Finland’s expenses are two hundred thousand euros
The Finnish Skiing Federation has not bought any equipment, but even without them, its expenses for the fluoride ban are well over two hundred thousand euros.
– In the first years, we went between 50,000 and 100,000. Now we move between 20,000 and 50,000 euros annually. The fork in the costs is big and the outlook for the operation is blurry, says Ismo Hämäläinen, executive director of the Ski Association.
Hämäläinen and Waibel are urging the International Ski Federation to take an extension of time in the implementation of the fluoride ban. Different amounts of money have been burned in all national federations.
Maintenance manager of the Norwegian cross country team Stein Olav Snesrud does not want to estimate the working hours spent by his team on the fluoride ban. However, according to Martin Norrgård, Finland’s former maintenance manager, the test quantities used by Norway for fluorine-free creams are in their own league.
Snesrud does not deny that this is the case, but does not open the readings.
– We have 8-9 maintenance men who get paid all year round. It naturally gives us the opportunity to test a lot, says Snesrud.
The Swedish national team has six full-time ski guardians, Finland has none.
Efforts are being made to tighten the EU law
Fluoride creams contain environmentally harmful perfluorinated alkyl compounds, i.e. so-called PFAS compounds.
The environmental authorities aim to limit the use of PFAS compounds in the next few years, so-called critical areas. Such could be, for example, medical uses, a researcher at the Finnish Environment Institute Timo Seppälä says.
According to Seppälä, the law limiting PFAS compounds is currently in the opinion round in the European Union. However, there is no certainty whether the law would pass at the level banning fluoride creams and, above all, on what schedule.
– The legislative proposal could come in 2025 at the earliest, after which it could enter into force after the transition period. But overall at this stage it is impossible to say, as the total ban on the use of fluorine in ski preparations will come into force, what form it will take or if it will take place at all, says Seppälä.
“A year’s postponement is no longer an option”
Although the players in the cream industry and the national federations interviewed by Urheilu hope that the FIS would dare to blow the whistle on the fluoride saga, there has also been a positive turn in the implementation of the fluoride ban.
The ski federations of Norway, Germany and Finland are particularly praised that after the difficult first years in terms of information transmission, FIS has allowed the countries’ maintenance forces to be part of the development work of the device that monitors the fluoride ban.
At the heart of the fluoride ban is a member of the board of the International Ski Federation Roman Kumpost. The Czech Republic leads a working group whose task has been to create the conditions for the development of a device that monitors the fluoride ban.
Initially, FIS chose a German company called Kompass as the developer of the device, with which FIS made a contract consisting of installments, according to Kumpost. In order to receive the next installment, the company must meet the requirements set by FIS.
According to Kumpost, the most recent equipment updates have not met FIS’ goals, so money has not moved from FIS’s accounts to Kompass recently. However, according to Kumpost, the German company continues to develop the device.
Right now, FIS’s hopes are resting on a US company called Bruker, which manufactures measuring instruments for determining chemical concentrations. FIS now has a measuring device, but no algorithm.
– There are new substances on the market that we need to be able to connect to the mathematical model of the test device. These substances were not available last year, says Kumpost.
– If the national associations cooperate and bring their own versions of new substances to the table, we will be able to offer a reliable test. If everyone follows the rules and doesn’t use fluoride, we won’t have a problem. The same as with doping.
The maintenance teams of the national federations are currently trying to guarantee the reliability of the test equipment by cheating what they can. In other words: the test device must be able to find fluorinated skis under various covering materials.
Having worked for the Finnish Ski Association in the fluoride saga Teemu Lemmettylän according to that, the road to a reliable monitoring device is still long.
FIS is currently paying Bruker to develop the mathematical model. The model should be able to calibrate, among other things, the 30,000 euro device used by the US federal police to be suitable for monitoring the fluoride ban.
Even if the device is completed, its costs will be felt by the money-strapped national associations.
– The members of the Czech maintenance team drove to the fluorine device test event organized in Oberhof in the summer in a passenger car, where they also slept. The Czech federation could not afford to accommodate them in a hotel, Lemmettylä says.
For comparison: the German company’s unfinished test device is estimated to cost around 5,000 euros, so the US company’s product is almost six times more expensive.
No more procrastination
If the person in charge of the fluoride ban, Roman Kumpost, is to be believed, the skiers won’t have to argue next spring whether the fluoride ban will come into effect or not.
– After this season, we will have a fundamental decision on the fluoride ban. We cannot delay it by one more year. It is not possible to. We are doing our best to get the test device ready, and I am confident that we will succeed, says Kumpost.
Let’s say it again. In the countries in the second category in terms of budget, i.e. Finland and Germany, the extra costs of the fluoride ban add up to more than half a million euros. If you add to this the expenditure items of large countries, i.e. Norway, Russia and Sweden, and middle-class countries such as the United States and France, the total amount rises to well over two million euros, according to expert estimates.
For comparison: FIS pays 2.5 million euros in prize money in the men’s and women’s cross-country world cups per season.
And at this point, nothing is said about the fees paid by FIS for three years regarding the development of the monitoring device for the fluoride ban.