‘In 20 years I’ve seen leaps in human performance but frightening climate change’

Ski Sunday will be co-hosted by Ed Leigh on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer starting on January 4 at 17:30 GMT. Ed will be working on the renowned BBC Sport program for the 20th time this winter.

Everything depends on context. In the context of geology, twenty years is a heartbeat, a snowflake in the blizzard of time, but it also alters the context of television, which covers a fifth of TV’s lifetime.

I’ve witnessed significant improvements in human performance, frightful environmental changes, inspiring cultural shifts in the winter sports industry, and incredible technological advancements in my 20 years on Ski Sunday.

Women’s sport has changed the most during my time at Ski Sunday, and that is my personal favorite change.

The ski Sunday coverage was dominated by Franz Klammer and Jean-Claude Killy’s daring, Alberto Tomba’s machismo, and Hermann Maier’s aggression in its early years.

However, it has been fun to watch the female stars’ rise in the 21st century. Due to their world-class careers, Mikaela Schiffrin and Lindsay Vonn have a reputation for putting women skiers’ heads above men in many nations.

In alpine, Jenny Jones, Izzy and Zoe Atkin, Charlotte Bankes, Mia Brookes, and Kirsty Muir consistently outperformed the men, winning numerous British records with World Cup, World Championship, and X Games titles.

Winter sports struggle to be so optimistic about climate change, which is an uncomfortable truth.

The pace of the changes I have seen are terrifying despite the fact that 20 years should seem like a blink in terms of geology.

In the last 25 years, more than a third of the glacier’s mass has been lost. The gold mine of climate change lies in high-altitude regions.

According to the most recent forecasts, Europe’s glaciers are shrinking more quickly than any other place on earth.

In the best case scenario, we will lose 2, 000 glaciers by 2041 if the temperature rise continues to rise at 1.5 degrees. In the worst case, 4 000 glaciers, or almost all of them, would be lost by 2055 due to a 4C increase.

The advancement of high-speed connections and camera technology has been incredible in the last 20 years. In 2007, it would have been absurd to imagine that drones would be chasing athletes down mountains at 80 mph, giving us a first-person view (FPV) of the action in the vein of video games.

However, in this 2026 broadcast, chase drones are almost a required component.

We wore pencil cameras that were hardwired into camcorders in massive puffer jackets with a microphone that was retrofitted for the year 2008. A few large slams, which left both broken camcorders and ribs, are what I recall.

Ski Sunday has come a long way in terms of culture. I prefer to watch any of the early shows I was a part of rather than three rounds with an adult male grizzly bear. Although the action was still compelling, I don’t think our self-indulgent problems have really aged.

That is the current fashion, in our case. We did that because Top Gear was in charge of the world and blokey challenges were all-favorable.

I’d like to think that the show now enables more viewers to learn about winter sports through stories that we’re covering, from incredible paralympians and youth outreach initiatives to sustainable resorts and the adventures of restless souls. We make an effort to cover the full range of Alpine culture.

Klammer’s mesmerizing performance at the 1976 Winter Olympics was the start of Ski Sunday, which actually started in 1978.

In 2026, the show will begin its 49th year, which is three years older than Antiques Roadshow and three years older than Mastermind.

When my family and I first started watching, I was about 10 years old. We would reminisce about the exotic glamour of a fur-clad David Vine on a chalet balcony and his excitement as catsuit-wearing men tomahawk down the Hahnenkamm in Kitzbuhel.

It seemed to have a big impact on both my brothers and my father, who presumably also had a big impact.

We soon arrived at the newly constructed Gloucester dry ski slope, where Eddie the Eagle and I played laps together and had dreams of snow.

My mother (a teacher) had managed to wangle during a school trip that led to our eventual arrival in the Alps.

I get to know so many families who share similar stories, and I’m delighted to report that my family still spends two, sometimes three generations in the mountains skiing. Give me another way to enjoy the joy of having children, parents, and grandparents all enjoying the same thing.

I think Ski Sunday’s lasting appeal, the X-factor that defied TV’s declining audience trends, is based on a unique shared experience.