With the next two Winter Olympics to be staged in Asia, the Int'l Ski Federation (FIS) will have a "rare opportunity to grow snow sports in the world's most populous continent," according to Steve Keating of REUTERS. The 2018 Winter Games set for the South Korean resort of PyeongChang and with either Almaty, Kazakhstan or Beijing to be awarded the 2022 Winter Olympics, "the ski industry will gain an entry point into the sporting world's most coveted market." New skiers from China and India filling chair lifts "may be a far-off dream but for FIS, it is the future they are pursuing today." FIS President Gian-Franco Kasper said, "It is important there is no question, we need new countries that have money now and organizations and that's Asia. You see it in the financial world and it is exactly the same, everything moves eastwards." Like every sport and business, FIS "craves a piece of the Asian pie." India and China have snow-capped mountains and "billions of potential skiers, but the Asian market remains almost untapped outside of Japan" (REUTERS, 2/15).
