In another post I commented on what I believe is the unfairness of NCAA skiing which is suppose to be a team sport, but some teams may have all their racers seeded in the first or second seed, meanwhile other NCAA teams may not have a single racer in the first or second seeds. However, this is not only an issue at the highest level of competition in the U.S. which is the NCAA and Nor-Am circuits, but I also believe it's a concern at all levels of ski racing within the United States. I have a friend who raced for the USST in the 80's and 90's and he was telling me about how rough the courses could be on the Europa Cup Circuit. For example, during the recent World Cup Men's Tech races at Palisades in Lake Tahoe the USST did not have a single racer qualify on home snow for their second run in the slalom (top 30) and in the men's GS our best result was 21st. Meanwhile, even at the U14 level we often have racers given preferential seeding, but then they move up the the next level and can't handle the rougher course conditions in the back seeds. For example, most top U.S. FIS racers are racing in the first seed at the NCAA and Nor Am levels week in an week out, but then they get promoted to the World Cup with bib #58 and the majority of them can't handle skiing from the higher seeds. As a result the USST is basically a revolving door year in and year out of racers getting cut because they can't even crack the top 30 to score a second run. That's why I believe at the development level more races should utilize a flip seed format as much as possible so USA racers learn to ski fast regardless of their start order. Sure the top NCAA and Academy FIS racers may be dominating the competition this side of the Atlantic, but in Europe skiing fast in tough course conditions is the key to winning on the World Cup.
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U.S. ski racers need to learn how to ski out of the back seeds to score on the World Cup.
- Thread starter wolcoma
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Interesting topic. One of our HS school racers just returned from the Eastern Finals, pretty rough conditions do to alot of new snow. She made all her runs, but alot of kids dnf'ed. Just a personal thought here, but it seems like there is no shortage of "to heck with conditions I'm skiing it like its a clean course", good luck with that. Again just my thought, but there are quite a few racers that lack the ability or refuse to use it of essentially good sound free skiing technique. A SL run with deep ruts is going to ski more like a mogul run as an example.
Skiing late is a skill needed for all racers! Our 1st year racing against the NCAA Big Boys was eye opening, to be at the back of the pack after some serious edge pressure on the hill made for a few rodeos. It definitely improved my skills.
The beer league I usually race in flips the running order 2 nights of the season, so instead of running ~3rd and ~103rd, I run ~103rd and ~206th, the finish order doesn't change much, but the times relative to the pacesetter do! Oh, yeah, there are often more crashes.
The beer league I usually race in flips the running order 2 nights of the season, so instead of running ~3rd and ~103rd, I run ~103rd and ~206th, the finish order doesn't change much, but the times relative to the pacesetter do! Oh, yeah, there are often more crashes.
This is a issue in all ski racing, not just a the top. In the past, I did some coaching at a few ski academies. To this day, I have wondered who where truly the best skiers there. The kids with the low FIS points who got the best course conditions and received the best results because they got to race on a clean course or a higher FIS point racer, who always seemed to get a course that was closer to a bump run with gates, but somehow fought through it for two runs. Of course earning higher points and thus really not making "progress" on the points front. It is easy to say "just ski faster and get lower points" which in reality is very hard to do when you get to ski the same bombed out course race after race. Hence, for those who had unlimited parental funding, the ability to spend the summer in the Southern Hemisphere chasing "point lowering" races or the ones "lucky" enough to attend certain academies that offered the invitation only "point shaving" races to obtain points so low that were in no way a function of reality. Racing at the FIS level and above can be quite the dirty business at times with money and egos erupting all over the place.
I have a nephew that ran track in HS and college. Regardless of the meet or start order, everyone got to run on the same track that was in the same condition from the beginning to the end of the meet. You could clearly see who were the top runners. In a ski race, can you ever really know who is the best when the first out get a clean course and those bringing up the mid and rear are basically not even skiing the same race due to course breakdown?
I have a nephew that ran track in HS and college. Regardless of the meet or start order, everyone got to run on the same track that was in the same condition from the beginning to the end of the meet. You could clearly see who were the top runners. In a ski race, can you ever really know who is the best when the first out get a clean course and those bringing up the mid and rear are basically not even skiing the same race due to course breakdown?
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That was my biggest beef with certain kids at the academies. If the practice course was not perfect or it had broken down, these kids would literally disappear. You think it would be a skill development challenge but no, the usual response was "My points are low enough so I will never have to race in a course like that and if you make me do it I am going to complain to mommy and daddy". The other fun times was when we had natural snow days. "Hey, we are not running gates today, go out and enjoy the powder and soft bumps" The response was the lowest point racers would hide in the lodge. The funny thing was the mid to back of the pack kids were the only ones out skiing and actually having fun.
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Do the European skiers scoring in the World Cup, for instance just looking at Norway with Braathen, McGrath, Steen Olsen who are young skiers who have achieved a good deal of success in WC over the past couple years, did they not also have to begin skiing from the back seeds. Does Norway and other countries whose athletes do regularly qualify for second runs do this differently than we do in the US?
So my USST buddy raced a lot of Europa Cup and he said their courses were often tougher (more bumpy) than the World Cup venues, so that may help the Euro's where in the US a NCAA race may be at the Dartmouth Skiway or a Nor-Am on Golden Peak at Vail on a perfectly groomed trail. Don't get me wrong I think all racers should enjoy good course conditions, but I also think our more elite talent should also be racing in later domestic seeds would probably prepare them for the World Cup. Again in the US we even have U14's and U16's who have only raced in the first or second seed and they go to Europe starting bib #60 and they are freaking out. A perfect example is Ted Ligety and a big reason for his success on the World Cup is he often won races in tough course conditions. Ted was not only really fast with big angles, but he usually skied a higher and rounder line to deal with the ruts, etc.
There are several suggestions I have on this subject that will get me in hot water. One of them is just ski your race skis. I tell our racers put the free ride stuff away before Christmas and leave it in the closet till Valantines day, that pretty much brackets our HS race season. Learn to ski your race skis in all conditions and get your race equipment set up to ski all conditions. Learn what to do , not what to buy. We got some fresh snow last night and I'll be catching the am lift with my SL skis.
I like JPL's suggestion: athletes should ski all kinds of conditions on race skis, in and out of the course. I was extolling the virtues of skiing moguls as a complement to slalom training to my U16s last weekend--they almost universally dislike moguls, which hurts my brain--and they were surprised that I could ski them on my slalom skis. Huh?! This speaks to the larger issue of overly focusing on training gates....
Also, as a reminder of how fickle ski racing can be, it's certainly not always an advantage to be in the top seed. Case in point: New Hampshire U16 Boys Championship GS a couple weekends ago: it snowed enough prior to the race that we could not slip the course back down to the boilerplate, and several of the most powerful, top athletes (academy kids, points ranging from 60-100) struggled--the surface wouldn't hold under their skis. It took probably 30-40 racers to get down to a good surface, and the course definitely sped up. Second run flip included several smaller guys with bibs in the 60s.
Also, as a reminder of how fickle ski racing can be, it's certainly not always an advantage to be in the top seed. Case in point: New Hampshire U16 Boys Championship GS a couple weekends ago: it snowed enough prior to the race that we could not slip the course back down to the boilerplate, and several of the most powerful, top athletes (academy kids, points ranging from 60-100) struggled--the surface wouldn't hold under their skis. It took probably 30-40 racers to get down to a good surface, and the course definitely sped up. Second run flip included several smaller guys with bibs in the 60s.
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The Mahres were well known for their mogul skiing, and general launching off jumps. Years ago on epic, a guy told the story of seeing Marc Ghiradelli and his coach. Both had a bundle of gates on shoulder, and were skiing down a mogul field having a conversation.
How about this story of solid skiing fundamentals and badassery?
Skiing pow with downhill skis and doing a 360-
So quick story. During the scheduled pre Olympic DH at Snowbasin in 2001 it snowed a lot! One day when training was cancelled the Austrian team was ordered to the gym but Hermann Mair insisted on skiing some Utah powder. One of our instructors was assigned tochaperoneer guide him around. She said she took Hermann to the top of Strawberry Gondola & even though there was a bunch of fresh snow, there were still some giant moguls at the top of the main run. She said he took off on his DH skis at mock speed, hit the first big mogul & threw a giant slow rotation heli for about 75' & she never saw him again!
I guess I'm not really seeing this out our way. Last season, U16 championships, i watched a kid on his SL skis pop a great 360 over a cat track. Last week there was an SG camp scheduled. We got dumped on. Everyone went and skied powder with the coaches instead of SG. Head coach, "Awesome day!" Didn't see any powder skis. Then again, we're a long way from academy land.
Given the relative strengths of the British and American men's SL teams, maybe you guys should worry less about pow/bumps skiing and start practicing on some plastic slopes? 
Yeah, back when my daughter was racing the kids were skiing trees regularly in their SL skis. They had plenty of non-ballroom skiing. I don't see the seeding issue. You earn your seeding. Everyone starts at the back of the pack.
I've been coaching at a variety of levels (weekend programs, U16 through FIS academy athletes) and most of the faster skiers I can think of have a blast skiing trees, throwing questionable airs (had to discuss not throwing a 360 during the day's last super-G training run once), etc. I've also seen plenty of pretty damn good bump skiing from racers and former racers.
I honestly don't think any of that's changed much since I was racing 25ish years ago.
One big difference I have seen between East Coast programs and the four years I spent working in Montana is freeskiing on race days--we'd have kids in Montana rolling up to awards still in all their gear because they'd been skiing since the end of the second run, and I haven't seen that much (if at all) in New England. That being said, the combination of snow, travel schedule and weather out there was far more conducive to such activity.
On the subject of course conditions, it's a hell of a fine line. A course that's got just the right water content and the right snowpack temperature can hold up to hundreds of race runs and barely have a rut, which is clearly more fair than one that breaks down, and can also provide a more repeatable training experience. But you can't always get that kind of surface, so you absolutely need to be able to ski when things are less perfect.
You don't, however, need to be about to ski to 100% of your potential to get closer to the front, and that's where iterative improvement can come in (ie if you could ski 80 points on a perfect course and are starting from the back with 120 points, you should have a better start position on the next list with a 100-point finish).
Anecdotally, I raced a pair of Eastern Cup slaloms in the spring of 199, wearing bib 123 and 124 if memory serves. I was on a pair of 188cm 9Ses; the top 30-45 racers had super sidecut slalom skis. There aren't many race situations with worse course conditions. I finished four runs, but I was either DFL or close to it. There were other racers with similar starting positions that were substantially faster because...wait for it...they were better skiers. They may not have had much of a chance of winning, regardless of their theoretical ability, but they were still plenty capable of moving up in the field.
Again, I don't think today's racers are all that different, and the biggest question becomes whether or not the fastest skiers have rankings that match their abilities early enough in the season to matter. The points system very definitely isn't perfect, and it can be even more imperfect in places that have small fields and limited in-season interdivisional competitions (like Maine and Montana), but overall, the kinks do work themselves out over time.
I honestly don't think any of that's changed much since I was racing 25ish years ago.
One big difference I have seen between East Coast programs and the four years I spent working in Montana is freeskiing on race days--we'd have kids in Montana rolling up to awards still in all their gear because they'd been skiing since the end of the second run, and I haven't seen that much (if at all) in New England. That being said, the combination of snow, travel schedule and weather out there was far more conducive to such activity.
On the subject of course conditions, it's a hell of a fine line. A course that's got just the right water content and the right snowpack temperature can hold up to hundreds of race runs and barely have a rut, which is clearly more fair than one that breaks down, and can also provide a more repeatable training experience. But you can't always get that kind of surface, so you absolutely need to be able to ski when things are less perfect.
You don't, however, need to be about to ski to 100% of your potential to get closer to the front, and that's where iterative improvement can come in (ie if you could ski 80 points on a perfect course and are starting from the back with 120 points, you should have a better start position on the next list with a 100-point finish).
Anecdotally, I raced a pair of Eastern Cup slaloms in the spring of 199, wearing bib 123 and 124 if memory serves. I was on a pair of 188cm 9Ses; the top 30-45 racers had super sidecut slalom skis. There aren't many race situations with worse course conditions. I finished four runs, but I was either DFL or close to it. There were other racers with similar starting positions that were substantially faster because...wait for it...they were better skiers. They may not have had much of a chance of winning, regardless of their theoretical ability, but they were still plenty capable of moving up in the field.
Again, I don't think today's racers are all that different, and the biggest question becomes whether or not the fastest skiers have rankings that match their abilities early enough in the season to matter. The points system very definitely isn't perfect, and it can be even more imperfect in places that have small fields and limited in-season interdivisional competitions (like Maine and Montana), but overall, the kinks do work themselves out over time.
Totally agree with you, but in some programs in the East, that is a no-no. The last program I was with, it was ok to let the kids free ski on their SL skis, but not GS skis because SAM was worried about liability. Free ski on SG skis, haha forget about it. Especially after that accident at Sugarloaf a few years ago at speed week. From what I was told, the were clearing some fresh snow off the practice course, so they told the kids to go out and ski a few runs. A girl from SMS had trouble with her SG skis in the new snow and ended up dead after skiing off trail. After that, total crack down on directing kids to free ski on "long" race skis due to liability. When I was at that age, all we had was long skis, with my GS boards longer and straighter that the current FIS Women's SG skis. I used those all over the mountain from trees, to moguls to powder, to hotdogging jumps on every bump I could hit.
Weird. Don't know that there's any ski type restrictions here. I'll ask.
SG skis only on netted venues here, but we don't have any management-imposed restrictions on GS skis. We do ask our kids to stay on groomed terrain with them because their ability to find obstacles and damage skis is impressive even on trails that have good snow cover, and we try to be cognizant of crowds when picking times and places to let them ski GS.
I absolutely do see value in skiing soft and three-dimensional snow on race skis, but I'd point out that part of the reason we did that decades ago is that modern all-mountain and powder skis didn't exist. While it might be a good thing for skill development, asking a kid to ski race skis on a powder day and leave the wider, rockered skis in the locker room isn't exactly good for promoting lifelong love of sport. I think that, overall, one of our issues in most of the east is that we don't tend to get persistent soft snow conditions, so you don't end up getting a week of training on soft snow after a storm. On the flip side, many Western programs need to water race venues if they want to get racers who can actually ski on firm snow.
I absolutely do see value in skiing soft and three-dimensional snow on race skis, but I'd point out that part of the reason we did that decades ago is that modern all-mountain and powder skis didn't exist. While it might be a good thing for skill development, asking a kid to ski race skis on a powder day and leave the wider, rockered skis in the locker room isn't exactly good for promoting lifelong love of sport. I think that, overall, one of our issues in most of the east is that we don't tend to get persistent soft snow conditions, so you don't end up getting a week of training on soft snow after a storm. On the flip side, many Western programs need to water race venues if they want to get racers who can actually ski on firm snow.
That is a tragedy, years ago we lost a girl from our area that was at Hood training super G. As a hill rep for a ski brand I used to get calls every year " my kid qualified for JO's , do you have any SG/DH skis he/she can borrow?" I told them the same thing every year, I wouldn't recommend taking an unfamiliar pair of skis out west to run DH/SG sounds like a disaster in the making. Every year we see a fair number of kids over equipped or unfamiliar with their gear. Maybe the answer is structured free skiing[kinda sounds like doing math home work at recess] setting up out of course experiences for them to gain mileage on their race boards , but minimizing danger to them and the skis[ no rail slides on race skis].
Getting enough speed training is hard, especially for Masters, as there are almost no speed camps for older racers.
After morning GS gate training, Masters coaches like ScotsSkier would occasionally take us out in the afternoon to free-ski wide open groomers on SG skis during uncrowded mid-week days. We would also occasionally break out the SG and DH skis to get a few turns on a closed run after GS training. Typically Masters here only have a few dedicated days of speed training prior to scheduled Masters SG & DH races.
After morning GS gate training, Masters coaches like ScotsSkier would occasionally take us out in the afternoon to free-ski wide open groomers on SG skis during uncrowded mid-week days. We would also occasionally break out the SG and DH skis to get a few turns on a closed run after GS training. Typically Masters here only have a few dedicated days of speed training prior to scheduled Masters SG & DH races.
The restriction for us was when the kids were officially at training. GS skis were only to be used on the training course and back down to the lift. I always had to remind them not to ski down to the lift too fast because the last thing we need is someone from the general public complaining, then I get to hear the ahole GM complaining again how he will add more restrictions on race training.
Of course, if the kids came to the mountain on their own time, we had no control on what they were skiing on, and neither did the ski area. I may have suggested a few times it might be a good idea to get the long boards out for free skiing.
