Swiss comparison: What is going wrong in South Tyrol?

"After the Saturday slalom with gold for Camille Rast and silver for Wendy Holdener and a great celebration, I fell into bed at around 12 o'clock. 5 hours later I left Saalbach and headed home to Truden. As beautiful as Saturday was, as great as the success was - but family comes first," said the 43-year-old after his greatest success as a ski coach.

In the car, he reviewed the women's slalom. "Camille Rast has always been a winner, even as a young girl. But she has had a lot of health problems in recent years. When she won the World Cup for the first time this year, she got a huge boost. The fact that she then managed to win the second run of the slalom so consistently, as the leader of the first run, was great." Especially since Rast really wanted to beat the "big" Wendy Holdener. "This internal competition has taken the whole team to a new level. Nobody wants to back down, everyone is driving at full speed to win and be faster than the others."

Suddenly a star coach Heini Pfitscher has been in the spotlight in ski-mad Switzerland since last summer. He has succeeded legendary coach Luis Prenn from Innichen in the so-called Mastery Group for World Cup slalom and giant slalom, who had previously been head coach for 11 years. "The offer from women's racing director Beat Tschuor came as a surprise to me. Luis Prenn is a myth, and should I succeed him? I have decided to tackle it and be the coach of Rast, Holdener, Meillard, Elena Stoffel, Aline Danioth and Nicole Good. It is a huge challenge, but their professionalism and their great desire to constantly improve is what drives me too."

Wendy Holdener (left) and Camille Rast (right). © ANSA / ANNA SZILAGYI

The man from the Lower Land can still count on the support of Prenn. He now looks after a smaller group with Stefanie Grob, Janine Schmitt and Simone Wild, but is always on hand to offer help and advice when needed.

What's going on in South Tyrol? Despite the intensive work with "his" girls, Heini Pfitscher still has his eye on ski racing in his own country. When asked: "What's going on in South Tyrol?", he doesn't know the answer either: "I was the state coach here for 7 years, both for the girls and the boys. I had Karoline Pichler, Hannes Zingerle, Florian Schieder, Alex Prast, Simon Maurberger and Luis Kuppelwieser under my wing."

Heini Pfitscher (left) also has his eye on South Tyrolean skiing.

What has changed compared to before? Pfitscher: "Everything has become much more professional. From a young age, it's skiing, skiing, skiing. But it sounds absurd if I ask a 7 or 8 year old child to spend 30 or 40 days skiing on the glacier. That's bound to take the fun out of it. Over 4 or 5 years, that's 150 days less skiing for me in terms of training. But only those who ski become better skiers. That's easy to explain."

Pfitscher: “The whole skiing world envies us” Pfitscher is not prepared to ignore the fact that there is a lack of talent in South Tyrol: "The whole skiing world envies us. If we look at the number of starters at the VSS, at the Grand Prix races and also at the Marlene Cup - they are impressive. And I maintain that the South Tyrolean national squad is still the best in Italy in terms of structure. Training now takes place in Argentina in the summer, in Scandinavia in the autumn, and in the ski halls in Europe. Of course, all of this is extremely expensive and can only be afforded by those who are financially well off. But it is a fact that Italy has the most racers in the FIS rankings, far more than Switzerland or Austria. South Tyrol is the leader in the Italian rankings." “With us, you might be satisfied more quickly, take it easy, and don’t approach every training day with the necessary ambition.” Heini Pfitscher But what Trudner notices: "Perhaps the city dwellers are now more aggressive than our children here on the mountain. They do their training program more conscientiously. With us, people are perhaps more satisfied, take it easy, and don't approach every training day with the necessary ambition." And: "The ski clubs in Italy are organized very differently than here in South Tyrol. They have huge budgets. Even school education is often only taken on as a sideline. Here in South Tyrol there are sports high schools, but their resources are often limited."

Bureaucracy also stands in the way Another problem in Italy is the ski trainers. There is no job description for them, meaning that every trainer is a ski instructor with training. He is a freelancer and has to take care of social security contributions, pension provision and tax burdens himself. In Switzerland, Pfitscher is an employee of the ski association and receives his salary like a normal employee. His employer at Swiss Ski takes care of all the bureaucracy.

"Of course, our model is not conducive to finding capable and competent people," says Pfitscher, explaining another reason why fewer and fewer talents are making the big leap. Just one detail: 10 South Tyrolean ski coaches are currently working in the various Swiss Ski teams, and others are working one level below in the three performance centers in the West, Central and East, as well as in the national squads depending on the canton.

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Swiss comparison: What is going wrong in South Tyrol?

Switzerland won the Ski World Championships in Saalbach-Hinterglemm in style. The Swiss dominance raises the question: What makes Switzerland better – and what is going on with skiing in South Tyrol?

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