From Tuesday (3 January), Iran will host three events in the Alborz mountain range near Tehran featuring around 10 Iranian athletes.
These mark the first time Iran host World Alpine Skiing and World Para Snowboard competitions and are a culmination of a talent identification programme held in the Asian nation two years ago.
“We began and also continue planning to support athletes' activities in winter sports through participation in Nagano 1998, Salt Lake City 2002, Torino 2006, Vancouver 2010, and Sochi 2014,” Iran’s National Paralympic Committee Secretary General Masoud Ashrafi said.
“For the last two years we tried to develop, encourage and attract more athletes to winter sports in our country. At this time, we are hosting three winter sports events in Iran, which is the result of our efforts to develop winter sports with the help of World Para Alpine Skiing and World Para Snowboard.”
The first event – a World Para Snowboard sanctioned event in Dizin – will take place 3-4 January; followed by two World Para Alpine Skiing competitions in Darbandsar (8-9 January) and then Dizin (16-17 January).
“Iran have more than a million kilometers of mountains and many parts of them are used as ski resorts, so athletes in our country can ski more than six months in a year,” Ashrafi said.
Head of World Para Snow Sports Dimitrije Lazarovski and two international classifiers will be present to share their knowledge on how to develop winter sports.