Urs Lehmann and Peter Barandun Elected Co-Presidents Of Swiss-Ski

At the 120th Swiss-Ski Delegates' Meeting in the Kursaal Bern, the presidium for the term of office from 2024 to 2028 was elected, among other things. Peter Barandun is now co-president of the association alongside Urs Lehmann. The event was hosted by the Swiss Academic Ski Club (SAS), which is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.

The voters approved both the President's annual report and the 2023/24 annual financial statements before the presidential elections, the highlight of the 120th Delegates' Assembly. The association will now be led at a strategic level by co-presidents. While Urs Lehmann is already entering his fifth term at the helm of Swiss-Ski, the previous vice president Peter Barandun was newly elected as co-president.

The 60-year-old Graubünden native, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Electrolux and Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of Arbonia AG, has been a member of the Swiss Ski Executive Committee for 12 years. "Due to the increased complexity and the large number of projects, the Executive Committee wanted to broaden the distribution of tasks and responsibilities at the top," says Peter Barandun. "I am delighted to be able to tackle these extremely exciting and challenging years as co-president together with Urs Lehmann. We are convinced that this structural adjustment will enable us to achieve even greater effectiveness at all levels - from recreational to competitive sport."

Tamara Wolf and Claude-Alain Schmidhalter, members of the Executive Board since 2021 and 2016 respectively, were confirmed by the delegates in their positions as Vice President and Vice President respectively. The Swiss-Ski Executive Board for the term of office from 2024 to 2028 is therefore composed as follows: Urs Lehmann (Co-President, responsible for the Sports division), Peter Barandun (Co-President, responsible for the Commercial division), Claude-Alain Schmidhalter (Vice President), Tamara Wolf (Vice President), Raphaëlle Favre Schnyder (newly elected representative of the Interregion West, replacement for Florence Koehn), Stefan Binggeli (representative of the Interregion Central) and Marco Gut (representative of the Interregion East).

At the General Assembly, Swiss-Ski was once again able to look back on an extremely successful year in sporting terms, in which, among other things, it managed to successfully defend first place in the World Cup nations' ranking in alpine skiing by a large margin and to achieve a total of 121 World Cup podium places in nine different sports. Not least thanks to the numerous sporting successes of recent years, Swiss-Ski has great financial stability. The profit surplus for the 2023/24 financial year, in which Walter Reusser (CEO Sport), Diego Züger (CEO Commercial) and Claudia Lämmli (COO/CFO) were operationally responsible at association management level, amounts to CHF 131,225. "Our stable financial basis is of great importance. It helps us to make necessary investments in various areas and to drive innovations in order to be able to promote and sustainably develop the sport - from the snow sports clubs to the top of the World Cup," explains Urs Lehmann.

Numerous honors and awards

One of the highlights of the 120th Delegates' Meeting was the awarding of honours to the large number of Swiss-Ski athletes who were successful in the World Cup and at the various Junior World Championships last winter.

Amid great applause from the delegates, four people were named honorary members of Swiss-Ski. They are Florence Koehn (member of the Swiss-Ski executive committee from 2011 to 2024), Gary Furrer (former head of popular sports and head of the ski jumping discipline at Swiss-Ski), Marius Robyr (long-time OC president of the World Cup races in Crans-Montana) and Hugo Steinegger (long-time OC vice-president and media director of the World Cup races in Crans-Montana).

As part of the delegates' meeting, Swiss-Ski also said goodbye to retired athletes. In addition, five people who have made a valuable contribution to Swiss snow sports received the Golden Badge of Merit, namely Michel Burgener (men's alpine skiing physiotherapist for two decades), Patrik Noack (former cross-country and biathlon team doctor), Marco Pilatti (long-time alpine skiing service man), Pepe Regazzi (assistant and head coach of the snowboard freestyle team from 2005 to 2023) and Marc Völz (long-time head of the NLZ Einsiedeln ski jumping and ski jumping coach).

The next Swiss-Ski delegate meeting will take place on July 5, 2025 in Fiesch VS.