#SnowStories: ‘The Oracle’ Janez Fleré reflects on a life in skiing

Janez Fleré is the FIS Technical and Administrative Coordinator for Alpine Skiing. Rarely has a job title failed so spectacularly to sum up a person’s role within an organization.

Now 66, Fleré has worked in a number of positions for FIS since 2002. In that time, he has become the go-to person for any query about rules and the finer points of administration. Colleagues universally speak of his approachability and willingness to help.

Hailing from Bariloche in Argentina, Fleré took up skiing as a young child on wooden skis. He was good enough to represent his nation at the Lake Placid 1980 Olympic Winter Games, an occasion he recalls in typically modest fashion.

"It was not like today when they have only 153 quotas that they need to distribute across 100 nations and everybody wants to be there,” he said. “It was not so difficult to be there. We were... not tourists but in the bottom 25% of the field. I was Argentinian champion but I was never an amazing skier.

“I started the Downhill and Giant Slalom. I was supposed to race the Slalom also but, the afternoon after the GS, we had a training session with my team and played football with the Swiss. I picked up a small injury and was unable to start.

“If you go to my biography, it immediately says ‘Olympic racer’. And it’s so hard to be an Olympic racer today. But at the time, honestly, it was not so important to me.”

Lake Placid was the end of Fleré’s competitive career, and he then started a family and made strides in business. He was drawn back to skiing in 1995 when he began helping out the Argentinian Ski Federation as a volunteer. “They needed to replace FIS technical delegates,” he recalled. “So they asked me to study and become a TD. I did my written and practical exams with Sarah Lewis who was, at that time, Continental Cup Coordinator and travelling to the Southern Hemisphere in the summer.

“After I gained my TD licence, I was Chief of Race in Argentina and TD in Chile for the next few years. In 1996, I started to go to FIS congresses for Argentina, and I became a member of the Technical Delegates, Rules and Classification Sub-Committees in Alpine Skiing.”

In 2000, Bariloche was awarded the 2003 Alpine Ski World Junior Championships with Fleré named Chief of Race for the event. He contacted his friends in Europe including Lewis, who by this point was FIS Secretary General, and then-Continental Cup Coordinator Markus Waldner, now Men’s World Cup Chief Race Director.

“I was assisting both Continental Cup Coordinators during the winter in early 2001, travelling with them,” said Fleré. “We had a really good season, but it was only provisional.”

Unfortunately, the political situation in Argentina meant that training would not be put into practice in his homeland: “We had five presidents in one month, so we lost government support and had to give back the World Junior Championships.”

A life-changing phone call

But as that door closed, another one soon opened. “In the middle of September 2002, Sarah called me,” Fleré remembers happily. “They had a problem as the coordinator of the Ladies’ Europa Cup could not cover the winter, and they needed someone who could do the job immediately.

“She offered me a contract for FIS to act as a coordinator for the Ladies’ Europa Cup from October 1st to end of March. So, I was there and I talked with my family and said, ‘OK, I will go for six months to Europe to do this job.’ Suddenly, in January, there was a spot open at FIS as a secretary for the Alpine Committee and some other things. And they asked me if I wanted to work with them a little bit more longer. So I called my partners in Argentina and I said, ‘You know, I will be in Europe for maybe two or three years doing this job.’

“It was amazing to do it. My family came to Europe and we said, ‘OK, we will stay here.’ Now it’s 2025 and I’m still working for FIS.”

“When I started in 2002 and then in 2003, also acting on the administrative side, one of my important tasks was to receive all the proposals from all around the world about Alpine. If someone had an idea and wanted to make a proposal, like a National Ski Association (NSA), they sent it to me. I read it, asked them what they want to do, and then passed it on to the relevant committee.

“If it was to do with FIS points, I’d send it to classification. If you were talking about International Competition Rules (ICR), I’d send it to rules, and so on for Continental Cup, equipment… And slowly, as I was head of secretary of the Alpine Executive Board and this overarches all of the Sub-Committees, I became involved with all those Sub-Committees.

“I’d hear exactly what I hear what people think about the committee and its members. Whether what we do is correct or not, and I would try to guide them a little bit from the beginning. But at the end, the members were deciding, not me. When the committee members made their decision, I’d take note and explain to the Executive Board what the committee has done before approval.

“If there was doubt about an issue, they’d call me to explain. And I’d say, for example, ‘The spirit of the rule was this idea,’ because sometimes it’s very difficult to write a rule. The rule says this but you need sometimes to understand the spirit of the rule.”

Fleré’s expertise and experience has prompted Sport & Event Director Sandra Spitz to dub him ‘The Oracle’. The regard and trust held in him by his colleagues means he can update ICR and other documents without supervision. And, as retirement approaches, that makes him incredibly hard to replace.

“I love what I do, but it’s difficult to transmit this to someone,” he admits. “There are so many small details and other things. And there are already people in FIS who can perform some of these tasks.”

Looking back, and looking forward

When asked about the changes he has seen during his life in Alpine Skiing, the Argentinian is quick to point to advances in equipment. “When I was a racer, we went to a company or factory and received 10 pairs of skis,” he recalls. “But the companies were not really interested in racing as they thought more about tourists.

“Now the racing department in each company is very, very important, and young people don’t get skis for free. You need to pay and it has become a big business, but the equipment is of very high quality. We also have injuries, and now everybody can see them… when I was racing there was maybe one guy filming it but otherwise nobody could learn from crashes. Now we have multiple video angles, even drones, to be able to see what happened.”

One thing that has not changed over the years is Fleré’s passion for his role. “After 16 years on the slopes and six more on the administrative side, I’m so happy when I can help people solve problems,” he says. “I receive a lot of emails about rules or interpretation of the rules, or changes of dates, events or sites in the calendar… every time, I can help or have the feeling it can be solved easily, that’s what’s important to me.

“The job I was offered in September 2002 would usually go to someone nearer to the sport. I remember a very good Austrian friend asking how I got this job, one they would have paid to do. You received a FIS car, a FIS jacket, and the respect we got back then was incredible. When you arrived in this car to a ski area, everybody was waiting for you as the FIS representative. That respect isn’t the same now as everybody questions you and needs convincing.”

It has not always been sweetness and light for Fleré, and there were occasions - particularly when working as the Ladies’ Europa Cup Coordinator - where he had to take difficult decisions. “This job, you basically did alone,” he recounts. “You have to trust the people where you go, and I remember we had a race in an important ski area. The Chief of Race told me over the phone that everything was fine and correct so I confirmed the event as scheduled. Suddenly, there was an unusual weather situation that we knew could happen. There was not enough snow on the slope and I had 120 racers ready to start and 120 coaches complaining.

“You realise this is your responsibility, and it was really tough for me to cancel the race and send everybody home after they were asking me three or four days previously, ‘Are you sure we are going there?’ This was probably one of the moments that I felt, ‘Why should I do this?’ It was not my fault, but I had to assume that it was partly my fault.

“I left this site after two days fighting with the people there, and I remember I was driving on the highway and I stopped in the first town, I don't remember where. And I just went to the hotel and I went to sleep - I think it was 10 o'clock in the morning - for two days. I just rested. This was really a tough moment for me. I wanted to quit everything, but then I started again and this is part of my job.

“It was very, very important for me. Nobody remembers a cancelled race, but everybody remembers a bad race. And if there are injuries or worse, it will never be forgotten.”

In his time on the slopes, Fleré saw the likes of Anna Veith (née Fenninger), Frida Hansdotter, Veronika Zuzulova, and Sofia Goggia graduate from the Europa Cup to become global stars. But he has also seen the development of venues with Andorra giving him particular pleasure.

"I went to Andorra for the first time in 2003, convincing the organisers to do Europa Cup races,” he said. “And I told them, ‘If you want to have a World Cup race, it will be easier if you build a Downhill course.’ And they always remember this: ‘You suggested to us that we do it.’

“They almost got the World Championships, but they have done everything else: European Cup, World Cup, World Cup Finals. It’s nice to see how ski areas develop and reach a higher level. And this is also part of our job.”

As for the future, Fleré sees the bringing of media rights in-house from next season as “very promising”. He also hopes his native South America could soon host World Cup races again for the first time since 1990.

“Every year, more athletes are going to train in the Southern Hemisphere. If this continues, it will not be so difficult to organize a World Cup some place there. For the moment, the only site prepared is Cerro Castor in Ushuaia, south of Argentina, to do some technical events. But, for this, the NSA and the organizer will need economic support from the government and this is not so easy to obtain for a sport like skiing.

“But if it’s a World Cup, it means we need to go around the world. We have possibilities there. We struggled before to get interest from television producers but, now we have all the rights together, maybe we could do it. For technical events, there’s Ushuaia, and probably Australia and New Zealand. For speed, we would need to go to Chile. Yes, it’s tougher, but that would be exciting.”

In almost a quarter of a century at FIS, and before that, Fleré has made a huge contribution to Alpine Skiing. And during his final years at the organization, it feels right to pay tribute to the man from Bariloche who has achieved so much as a race coordinator, and administrator.

With #SnowStories, FIS sheds a light on the thousands of characters, across all levels and around the whole world, that are the true beating heart of snow sports.