The international ski federation is banning camera drones from its World Cup races after one of the flying objects crashed and nearly hit Austrian skier Marcel Hirscher during a slalom in Italy.
FIS will prohibit drones "as long as I am responsible .... because they are a bad thing for safety," men's race director Markus Waldner told The Associated Press on Wednesday, a day after the night's race in Madonna di Campiglio.
"It was huge luck that Marcel was not hurt," Waldner said.
"I am very angry."
The drone carrying a TV camera came down and shattered on the icy slope just behind Hirscher, a few seconds after the Olympic silver medallist started his second run.
In his blog for redbull.com on Wednesday, Hirscher joked about "surviving an air strike" before turning more serious.
"Quite honestly, if I look at the pictures from the drone crash on the internet, I get sweaty palms and tremble," he wrote.
"Speaking of safety, we are lucky, despite some severe injuries, not to have more.
"At the parallel competition alone, there could have easily been five cruciate ligament tears and two serious collisions - not to mention crashing drones. FIS, please do your job!
"I am very relieved that nothing happened. You don't want to think about what could have happened when 10 kilograms are coming down 20 metres.
"That would have been a very serious, bad injury. There are a lot of cool things nowadays. But you have to guarantee the safety - and that was just insane."
According to Waldner, FIS had agreed on the use of the drone at Tuesday's slalom but the pilot wasn't allowed to fly the camera directly over the race course - and needed to maintain a 15-metre distance from the racer.
"He did not follow our instructions," the race director said.
Drones have been used many times before at ski races. The ski federation said the new technology was aimed at enhancing the experience for TV viewers as it provides moving pictures from an overhead angle which regular cameras can't shoot.
FIS said legal restrictions in Italy for the use of drones at events are not as tight as in many other countries, such as Austria and Switzerland, where flying over a crowd has been banned.
The company responsible for the camera drone, sports marketing agency Infront, said it was still examining the crash.
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