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| Special Feature - Skiing in Morocco |
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What do you think of when someone says "Morocco"? Palm trees, dates, camels, beaches, blue seas, sunshine and temperatures of 40*C and for the amateurs of culture the old Imperial cities, the Kasbahs, the sumptuous mosques dedicated to the old wise men that brought the Islam and Royals to the Northern extremity of the African Continent.
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Some people also talk about the mountains of the Atlas and its colourful Berber population even go beyond into the Sahara Desert and it Touareg population, the Indigo clad Bedouins roving the desolate sands with their camels and tents.
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The Atlas Mountains reach up to 4300 m and even have permanent snow patches. During the winter some snow accumulates on the highest tops but hardly ever below 2500m.
If you should want to ski the country offers skiable heights from the end of December till mid march much more then 12 weeks in this period can't be squeezed out. Most of the Atlas mountains are open to trekking skiers that ski from refuge to refuge and are isolated from the world for days on end.
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Don't expect to find a wall socket for electricity in the mountain refuges, and don't expect much of heat except what your bring in with your body heat. Most places in the mountains are not more then hammocks. A few houses cut from the rock and stacked on top of each other.
Morocco has very little to offer for the average the Alpine skier, but very little is more than nothing at all. 2 Alpine ski stations exist. The most northern ski station is Mischliffen, near Ifrane. Ifrane itself is a mountain village but probably the most un-Moroccan of all villages.
As you drive on the road from Meknes the road literally lifts you from the plain around Meknes through the woods. As a matter of fact as you break out of the pine forest and into Ifrane you might wonder if you have driven through a warpgate (or some other futuristic device) and were thrown into Swiss or the Alsace regions. You would expect people to address you in german instead of French. Ifrane itself doesn't have any slope but a 10 km drive n Mischliffen you'll find the slopes. Lodging in Ifrane is abundantly available.
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80 km south of Marrakech at near to 2800 m is the village of l'Oukaimeden. During the winter it offers 12 lifts and a good selection of different accommodation ranging from apartments to a ****hotel. The slopes in l'Oukaimeden have one very long slope and mostly blue slopes. The fact that there is no slope maintenance equipment, makes the slopes somewhat more uncertain compared to our European slopes and increases the difficulty.
Many local communities in the mountains that have ski-able terrain (but not necessarily lift-equipment) or offer trekking skiers facilities have ski clubs. The most important ski-club is the FAR (the ski club of the royal Moroccan Military). They are so important that the Moroccan Ski Federation is relying on them to provide the necessary help to prepare slopes for the championship races. Of course they have the means and the opportunity to exercise and ski regularly. Obviously the FAR have had the Moroccan Alpine Ski champion among their skiers
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Since 3 years 3 young skiers are active in Europe. Many of you might have seen at least one at work. They joined the Moroccan National team and have represented it in International races, on a regular basis. The Moroccan Ski Federation have set up an antenna in Belgium to support their skiers.
Sarah Ben Mansour : lives in Belgium and is 16, the coming season 2003-2004, she'll be skiing second year junior (born 1987). She skies since about 8 years, and joined the Belgian competition about 5 years ago. In 2000 she also joined the French regional competition in theVosges/Alsace-area. In 2001-2002 she was regional champion in her age-group.
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2 years ago she joined the Moroccan National team and participated in 4 Childrens races. Probably the most important result of those races was at Andorra where she finished 7th .
Last year she attended a number of FIS and Fis-CITizen races and was able to end at about 122 FIS points in the Slalom and 144 points in the Giant Slalom. This makes her eligible to participate in the next Winter-olympics of Turin 2006, already for Slalom and if her points improve also for Giant Slalom.
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David-Soulaiman Ben Mansour : lives also in Belgium and is 13, the coming season 2003-2004, he'll be skiing children II (born 1990). He skies since about 7 years, and joined the Belgian competition about 5 years ago. In 2000 he also joined the French regional competition in theVosges/Alsace-area. His results are less specatular than his sisters. But then again in the Men's competition the level is slightly heavier, and he's still very young. Contrary to his sister he's much more interested in the speed numbers, although he's rather young for it.
Samir : lives in France, Paris. He was born in 1977 and skies since he was 19. He decided in 1992 to be an Olympic skier. Just like the other two he's of a modest family, and his parents didn't have the money to let him go to the mountains. So once he was old enough he tried for himself. He works his butt off half the year to be able to train and compete the other half.
You might have noticed him during the 2001 St Anton World champonships. He was all over the press in Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland and Austria, on TV : he was the only Morrocan in the race, ended 1 before last at nearly 2' from Michael von Grüningen, and skied his 2 runs with his arm tied to his body after he had a dislocated shoulder during the training. In the 2003 St Moritz World championships he was 77th at about 45” from Bode Miller. Bode Miller made one hell of a performance during that race, everybody agrees the same can be said about Samir because before the World championship race he was at 200 pts in the FIS ranking, and he ended his race at 198 pts from Bode Miller.
Results put Morocco on the international skiing map
Last season beginning of March the Moroccan Federation organised together with Sierra Nevada's technical team their 3rd GP SAR. Moulay Rachid. An all ages combined race. Some Spanish racers came along and the even the Algerian youth team showed with their trainer.
The Algerian trainer although a Master is a very good skier and FIS level around 200 points. The team was invited to come and participate, in order to demonstrate their level.
Soulaiman the youngest became the outspoken winner of the races with more then 3” ahead of the best male racers each run ( that took just under 30” to complete), his sister and Samir as forerunner upheld an advantage of just over 2” on Soulaiman. They overpowered the lot and convinced the Moroccan officials of their value for the team .
All the Moroccan racers have one thing in common they live far from the mountains they are clearly “Citizen” racers like the FIS intended. They all are from modest families, and the have very little opportunity to train. Nevertheless when the Moroccan team arrives on the slopes every observer wonders if he just saw a skier from another country, and they don't believe the level our racers are skiing at, the technique they developed. Of course that's a flattering comment about the team and its minders, especially if it was made by another team's trainer but it doesn't get the team any further.
Is the black ring on the symbol still welcome on the white snow of the winter Olympics? The africans fight back to get on the Games!
Recently (just before the Salt Lake City Winter Games) the FIS and the IOC took some measures to ensure a minimum of competition power during the top level events like the Winter Olympics or the World Cup races. In part this was induced by a major concern for safety for the athletes during events that have a higher difficulty rate than other races and that entail a higher risk for athletes.
The minimum level would ensure that racers have the adequate level to compete at that risk en difficulty level. We as a team support that safety reason, however we do loath its practical results that has excluded the African racers from participating in what is supposed to be a universal event. Against that measure neither the IOC or the FIS have made any compensatory measures to allow the smaller teams to recover the lost ground and to alleviate the hurdles put before its athletes to prepare and compete.
At the same time the FIS had eliminated from the calendar a number of races that African countries could participate in. That cost us as an African team valuable training and competition opportunities. Since those measures the FIS has under pressure of Lamine Guèye and the new South African Federation, allowed all African skiers to participate in the southern hemisphere, and earn valuable points on that circuit too. Before African racers were considered to belong to the Northern Hemisphere (which is true for most of them : the Algerians, the Senegalese and the Moroccan teams). The racers for the Northern Hemisphere could only participate at the antepodes competitions with a minimum level of points.
The Moroccan team would like to appeal to the FIS to open more competition opportunities and allow all African skiers in the closed European events.
The Moroccan team would like to appeal to the FIS to open more facilities for the small countries to participate in combined competition and training events. We think about more possibilities of races during or at the end of (school-) holiday periods. Such as the November / autumn reces, the x-mas and new-years reces and the easter reces.
Many resorts shy away from FIS-level comptetitions during the highest peaks of the tourist season, mostly because the extra effort involved in securing race slopes from intrusions by unaware tourists, and the problems those closed passages cause for the debutantes to follow the more difficult rated diversion slopes.
Experience with the lowerlevel CIT and FIS races and the Small-countries (open) National Championship races (like Belgium), and CHI(children) races prove that such events do attract a lot of onlookers from among the tourists. People who per se have nothing to do with the event but come and watch it, cheering for skiers they don't even know, choosing underdogs for the target of their sympathy and even pushing it to do autograph sessions with young racers they might never encounter again.
Such an event requires a lot of work from the Ski school and the slope maintenance staff that has hardly any time to spare during a peak-season week, and the smaller resort the more difficult this question becomes but the mega resorts like Espace Killy, 3 Vallées or Dolomiti Ski just to name a few could easily handle such a job.
Internet links:
All images are copyright of
CAF Nantes-Atlantique - nclubalpin.free.fr
The Morroccan team in Europe: www.skimaroc.tk - Including a homepage for Samir and a page referencing articles on Lamine Guèye
Sarah's homepage: users.belgacom.net/skibabesaridoll
Soulaiman's homapage: users.belgacom.net/davidsuleiman
For skiing and touristical link see the links page of : www.skimaroc.tk
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