FIS Fluor ban in effect: Clean your skis and wax tools!

After passing a ban on fluor waxes in November of 2019, the FIS has finally decided to enforce it during the 2023-2024 season. The delay came from the inability of the FIS to find a way a reliable and cost-effective method to detect fluor on skis. According to the FIS,

FIS will carry out testing to ensure that skis are fluor-free at top-tier events, including the FIS World Ski Championships, FIS World Cup competition and other major events such as FIS Junior World Ski Championships. Testing at lower-level [FIS] events will be carried out on a random basis to ensure those events are also regulated.

Ski Racing Magazine has details about the testing protocol. You can read about them here:
https://skiracing.com/enforcing-the-fluor-wax-ban-fis-implements-reliable-testing/

Cleaning Methods

Skiers racing at this level have multiple pairs of skis and many existing tools and waxes. Cleaning skis and the wax room are required to ensure fluor contamination is prevented during the coming ski season. FIS has produced guidelines and suggestions for keeping your skis fluor-free. The original FIS guidance is located here:
https://assets.fis-ski.com/image/upload/fis-prod/assets/CleaningMethodsGuidelines.pdf and reprinted below, with a little editing to make it easier to read:

Tools:

When cleaning the tools, the most important is to get rid of all the dust particles. Therefor carefully clean your tools by high pressure air or vacuum it. Regarding brushes, you can use different methods to reach the results, but we recommend soaking the brushes in a wax cleaner, then blowing with air pressure, and vacuum them when dry.

Softer brushes, roto wool, roto fleece (used for powders and liquids) seem to be more difficult to be cleaned, cleaning of those have been non conclusive – best to replace them.

Plexi scraper- clean by wax remover. Also clean your wax table and ski profile.

Clean your Iron with Fluor free (FF) hot wax and dry it with a clean paper

Skis:

Regrinding as a method to clean the base from fluor has so far been non-conclusive. After regrinding it is still recommended to hot wax the base several times with FF wax.

First clean your skis minimum 2 times by liquid wax remover. Brushed, (metal brush) in between and let it dry.
Second clean your skis minimum 2 times by hot waxing and scraped it. Pay attention on the fact you must use Fluor Free wax and clean tools (brushes). Look for a base wax with which you feel comfortable (a mix with soft and harder waxes seem to work better) and above all, check that it is Fluor Free.
Continue to wax your skis with FF wax when you are going to train on snow, make sure that all your skis are skied.

After spring and summer ski camps following the previous procedure and have verified the cleaning quality of your skis, you can start to work with FF race wax, always paying close attention to the quality of the waxes used (get in contact with your wax suppliers to set up a good plan).

Skis bag:

Clean with care your ski bag by blowing and/or vacuum it.

Wax Boxes/Drawers:

Clean with care all boxes and drawers by vacuum it, blowing and wiped with wax remover.

Working clothes:

Wash your working clothes and aprons before start using the Fluor Free products. Contamination from dusty clothes and aprons are very likely

Waxes:

Be sure that the waxes you will use are certified fluor free, get in contact with your wax supplier and set up a plan.

Do not modify "official” waxes by adding external additive unless you are absolutely sure the additives do not contain fluor. The experience from the project is that many products, especially cleaning and lubricating products, do contain banned fluorinated additives.

Making the equipment ready for the next season will require a thoughtful approach and good understanding of the different cleaning steps. A good approach will be to start to clean the larger parts (wax cabin, tables, etc.) first and then move on towards more details. Not doing will increase the risk of contamination along the way, meaning you will have to redo the procedure and steps several times to have full control.