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Dan Murphy
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Alyssa Roenigk
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ESPN- Alyssa Roenigk is a senior writer for ESPN whose assignments have taken her to six continents and caused her to commit countless acts of recklessness. (Follow @alyroe on Twitter).
The skiers and snowboarders competing at the Beijing Winter Olympics starting later this week will be the first group to chase their Olympic medals on mountains blanketed with 100% artificial snow.
Training and competing on man-made snow has become an unavoidable reality as warmer temperatures and shifting weather patterns have made it increasingly hard to rely on nature. Artificial snow has been used to supplement Olympic sites since the 1980 Lake Placid Games and has steadily increased in the past couple decades, according to a research report on Olympic…
