A new ski ramp, believed to be the biggest in the world, was built in Moscow to host the World Alpine Ski Cup parallel slalom events which started on January 2.
The 56m high, 33m wide ramp had already entered the Guinness Book of Records last year when it hosted ski and snowboard freestyle World Cup legs in Moscow. These events will be staged here again in February and March this year.
The aim is to help boost interest in winter sports in the country five years before the southern Russian city of Sochi hosts the 2014 Winter Olympics.

We’re sure all the upcoming events to be held here will be a great success. It could give a boost to other big cities like New York, Paris and London as they don’t have the environment to host alpine skiing and snowboarding events yet. This moveable ramp will allow big cities to hold such competitions,”

said Dmitry Svishchev, Vice-President of the Russian Ski and Snowboarding Federation.
Ironically Moscow was suffering its warmest winter ever before Christmas and 4,000 cubic metres of snow was imported from the Kemerovo Region in Siberia, which has had heavy snowfalls recently.
The Siberian snow was in to 300 kilogram bags and sent to Moscow in refrigerated carriages. Temperatures in the capital were hovering at around +9 C degrees, ten degrees higher than the average and 40 degrees higher that the records low, -31C, set 50 years ago in 1959.