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Olympic skier dies in car crash in Austria

Slovenian alpine skier and coach Drago Grubelnik has died after the car he was in swerved off a mountain road and rolled down a steep hill in the ski resort of Sölden in Tyrol.

Published: 18 November 2015 11:42 CET
Olympic skier dies in car crash in Austria
The wrecked car Grubelnik was travelling in. Photo: Zoom-Tirol

The Kronen Zeitung newspaper reported that 39-year-old Grubelnik died on Tuesday in a hospital in Murnau, Germany, shortly after the accident. Two passengers in the car with him were flown to hospital with serious injuries.

The Slovenian ski federation said it “has lost an exceptional performer” in Grubelnik, who was a slalom specialist. He competed in three Olympic slaloms from 1998-2006. He reached one World Cup podium, in 2000, and retired seven years later.

He had been head coach of the Bulgarian ski team since 2013.

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CLIMATE CRISIS

Austria ‘likely to be ice-free within 45 years’

Austria is set to become largely "ice-free" within 45 years, the country's Alpine Club warned Friday, as two of its glaciers last year melted by more than 100 metres.

Published: 6 April 2024 12:17 CEST
Austria 'likely to be ice-free within 45 years'

Amid growing concerns over the effects of extreme warming on glaciers around the world, the latest report by the Austrian Alpine Club (OeAV) showed that rapid glacial retreat over the past seven years had accelerated.

The study found that 93 Austrian glaciers observed by the organisation retreated by 23.9 metres (78.4 feet) on average last year, marking the third-biggest glacier melt since measurements began in 1891.

Two of the glaciers showed especially drastic declines, with the Pasterze shrinking by 203.5 metres and the Rettenbachferner by 127 metres.

The 2023 readings came after the worst year on record for glacier melt in Austria, with glaciers shrinking by 28.7 metres (94.2 feet) on average in 2022.

Faced with extreme warming in the Alps, glacial ice in Austria could largely disappear within 45 years, the Alpine Club warned, adding that restrictive climate protection measures were introduced too late.

“In 40 to 45 years, all of Austria will be pretty much ice-free,” Andreas Kellerer-Pirklbauer, head of the Alpine Club’s glacier measurement service, told reporters on Friday.

The OeAV urged increased protection of glaciers as part of overall efforts to sustain biodiversity, noting that expansions of ski resorts had put Alpine regions “under constant pressure”.

According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), major glaciers worldwide suffered the largest loss of ice since records began in 1950, “driven by extreme melt in both western North America and Europe”.

In Switzerland, where the WMO is based, Alpine glaciers have lost 10 percent of their volume in the past two years alone.

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