PRESS RELEASE – PACIFIC PALISADES, CA – January 14, 2014 – Protect Our Winters announces the launch of the POW Riders Alliance, a group of 53 of the world’s top alpine, nordic and freeskiers, snowboarders, mountaineers and polar explorers, all committed to fighting climate change.
“Professional athletes are the core of Protect Our Winters – arguably, no other group has better first-hand experience with the progression of climate change and its impacts on global snowpack and mountainous regions, and certainly no other group has a greater cultural influence on the global winter sports community,” says Chris Steinkamp, POW executive director.
The group is comprised of global athletes including Olympians Gretchen Bleiler, Kikkan Randall, Nate Holland, Callan Chythlook-Sifsof, Andrew Newell and Steven Nyman, pro snowboarders Nicolas Muller, Danny Davis, Arielle Gold and Jamie Anderson, freeskiers Chris Davenport, Ingrid Backstrom and Kit Deslauriers and mountaineers/explorers Emily Harrington and Eric Larsen. Also joining the group is Wang Lei, a professional snowboarder from Beijing, China. See the entire list here.
“As a group, we’re touching every remote corner of the world at any given time, seeing climate change impacts in various ways,” states World Cup skier and US Olympian, Steven Nyman. “Climate change is affecting our lives and careers and it’s in our best interest to use our passion to mobilize the community and bring a new perspective to the policy discussion,”
The POW Riders Alliance was developed as a central platform for athletes to speak out and create a social movement against climate change. For example, POW recently led a group of 17 athletes and brand representatives to Washington, D.C. for meetings with US Senators and has reached over 20,000 young students with a message of climate action delivered by pro athletes.
With the Winter Olympics just a couple of weeks away, POW and Olympic athletes from the Riders Alliance will launch an initiative to call attention to climate change on the world’s largest sports stage in Sochi, Russia in partnership with a group of graduate students from the Yale School of Forestry.
Protect Our Winters (POW) is the environmental center point of the winter sports community, united together towards a common goal of reducing climate change’s effects on our sport and mountain economies. Founded in 2007, POW re-invests contributions in educational initiatives, advocacy and supporting community-based initiatives. For more information, visit http://www.protectourwinters.org.
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