World Cup racing safety discussion

[François Pugh]

I guess I will be the one to point out the elephant in the room. The real issue is that the forces required to keep skis on boots at speeds over 50 mph exceed the force needed to break legs. Do I feel safer skiing at 70 mph knowing that my bindings, set at the chart-recommended 5 will release before my skis break my leg? No. F that! I'm setting my bindings a wee bit higher. Granted, I don't have the luxury of b-netting and attendant medical personnel readily on hand, but I imagine many athletes skiing sanctioned events feel the same way.

Perhaps we can develop safer bindings through closer examination of release planes etc. There-in lies some hope.

There has been some suggestion in the past of some sort of kill switch that permits release of skis as you're flying through the air upside, but even there, I'm not sure I would hit that switch. I might want my skis on up to the point where I realize my leg is broken; I have recovered from passed out at tree-top level face to the ski, travelling at high speed, and managed to get my skis under me and somewhat pointed downhill once I realized where I was and what was going on. My skis did save me from a rather unpleasant fate. With the netting, maybe the choice would be different. The kill-switch release button is a good idea, imho.

 

[Rod MacDonald]

I guess I will be the one to point out the elephant in the room. The real issue is that the forces required to keep skis on boots at speeds over 50 mph exceed the force needed to break legs. Do I feel safer skiing at 70 mph knowing that my bindings, set at the chart-recommended 5 will release before my skis break my leg? No. F that! I'm setting my bindings a wee bit higher. Granted, I don't have the luxury of b-netting and attendant medical personnel readily on hand, but I imagine many athletes skiing sanctioned events feel the same way.

Perhaps we can develop safer bindings through closer examination of release planes etc. There-in lies some hope.

There has been some suggestion in the past of some sort of kill switch that permits release of skis as your flying through the air upside, but even there, I'm not sure I would hit that switch. I might want my skis on up to the point where I realize my leg is broken; I have recovered from passed out at tree-top level face to the ski, travelling at high speed, and managed to get my skis under me and somewhat pointed downhill once I realized where I was and what was going on. My skis did save me from a rather unpleasant fate. With the netting, maybe the choice would be different. The kill-switch release button is a good idea, imho.

I suggested the bindings release at the same activation point as the airbag. One signal, bag inflates, bindings release.

 

[Primoz]

@Rod MacDonald except that airbags inflate by mistake. At least for now. In this case, it's no big deal. You lost your Olympic gold medal, but that's minor thing, as there's no injuries (well if you ask any, and I really mean ANY SINGLE athlete, they would change blown up knee ligaments for Olympic medal in second). With bindings, relese by mistake wouldn't be such small thing

@François Pugh totally agree. That's why everyone are skiing with bindings set at twice of level "recommended" by DIN charts. But if we go into crazy solutions, there's easy solution for that. FIS starts to organize races on flat terrain, so speed can't be higher then 20km/h. No worries with setting binding too high. I mean, this literally eliminates almost all sorts of injuries, so with real easy solution, we get almost 100% safe sport

 

[François Pugh]

I suggested the bindings release at the same activation point as the airbag. One signal, bag inflates, bindings release.

Yes, but I would want to control that signal. I really don't know much about body suit air bags, so will remain silent on that point. I want my skis on until I decide they need to be off, not on until some computer decides they need to be off. I have the same sentiments towards automatic braking in a car; I would bypass that safety system.

 

[Rod MacDonald]

Yes, but I would want to control that signal. I really don't know much about body suit air bags, so will remain silent on that point. I want my skis on until I decide they need to be off, not on until some computer decides they need to be off. I have the same sentiments towards automatic braking in a car; I would bypass that safety system.

Unfortunately you're not necessarily the best person to make that decision once the crash is in motion.
Obviously airbags have been known to activate by accident, and that's a problem for the manufacturers and testing protocols to eradicate.
Airbags are standard in cars, and DO misfire on occasion, and many recalls have been made where defects in function have been identified, but they're still fitted, and crucially there is not one single solitary fitment where MANUAL activation by the driver is available.

 

[pchewn]

Of course ski racing can be made less dangerous. You could hold World Cup downhill events on gentle green runs with speeds in the 30mph range. That would make it safer. It would also not be very exciting.

 

[crgildart]

Just dropping in to say I also saw it live and it was horrific the way she was hanging in the netting screaming. To me it wasn't a certainty that the crash above is what caused that damage but more they way she hit the netting. I changed the channel before any real analysis of the crash and discussion about where/when the leg(s) broke. It was certainly made worse by the netting predicament though.

 

[scott43]

To be clear, I'm not a ski racing expert..but what I hear is the same type of conversations that occured in motor racing. The fellow that invented the HANS device tried to sell those things for years and nobody was interested..Dale Earnhardt actually ridiculed other drivers calling them pussies. There were numerous fatalities due to basal skull fractures and the narrative was always "well racing is dangerous" etc. Then Dale Earnhardt died of a basal skull fracture and people suddenly woke up. HANS is now mandatory in almost every motor vehicle racing form and there have been few, if any, basal skull fractures since. The Halo was ridiculed in F1 but Jules Bianchi's death motivated that safety feature, they're mandatory and it almost certainly saved Romain Grosjean's life. The chicane before Tamburello... Wayne Rainey, tells MotoGP that sand and gravel traps are dangerous, they flip people around..suggests using asphalt runoff. Everyone says, riders will not be punished then for leaving the track! Wayne Rainey crashes, augers into the gravel trap with his head and is paralyzed. Asphalt runoff is now the standard for many tracks. So I hear the people in the sport ridiculing these types of things and then we look back 10 years later and say how did we ever let people race without these things??? As Wayne Rainey said, sometimes it takes a big incident to make people wake up..

I personally don't care..no skin in the game..empathy is probably one of my weakest suits..people are welcome to maim and kill themselves however they please. I just think the narrative is (un)surprisingly similar...

 

[S.H.]

I'd rather see some changes/innovations in B netting to avoid skiers getting caught up/tangled in it than anything about changing gates. Anecdotally, I've seen several knee ligament injuries from athletes going into the net and having their boots/skis get caught in the net as their bodies keep twisting.

Panels can/should also be improved. A few years ago I recall there being (experimental?) panels that would tear apart in the middle; I don't think those are still a thing.

Hill prep could be improved (though IMO not a factor in the VdF races), especially at levels below world cup.

Course sets should have fall zones with relatively long runouts and adequate padding/fencing - again, IMO not an issue in VdF, but sometimes an issue in levels below world cup.

How many training courses are truly fenced adequately? Not all, for sure, even at the highest level.

Could binding technology be improved? Probably, but it will be tough given the threat of litigation and the costs for a relatively low-budget sport. Especially when it comes to completely revamping the basics of how a binding works just for <1000 athletes at the pinnacle of the sport. I don't think it's likely anytime soon.

I'm all for making improvements in ski racing safety, especially for what happens *after* a crash. I'm not sure I'm on board for changing what ski racing is.

In terms of injury, somewhat related, Steve Porino did an interesting interview with Troy Taylor (USST's High Performance director) earlier this month on his podcast. According to Taylor, per FIS data, at the World Cup level, something like half of injuries happen in races, and half of those injuries happen in the last 25% of races. Do athletes really train for true race conditions enough? Is it even possible? I mean, how do you *really* train for the level of fatigue at the bottom of Wengen? Adelboden? Will athletes still just push themselves to the limit so they're fatigued at the end of courses?

Troy Taylor - U.S. Ski Team's High Performance Director

Listen to this episode from Alpine Waxroom with Steve Porino on Spotify. In the last 25 years, I’ve been covering ski racing, I find myself asking this every year: Does it seem there are more injuries than usual? But this year, injury reports are so frequent that my list has more than 50 World...

open.spotify.com

 

[François Pugh]

Unfortunately you're not necessarily the best person to make that decision once the crash is in motion.
Obviously airbags have been known to activate by accident, and that's a problem for the manufacturers and testing protocols to eradicate.
Airbags are standard in cars, and DO misfire on occasion, and many recalls have been made where defects in function have been identified, but they're still fitted, and crucially there is not one single solitary fitment where MANUAL activation by the driver is available.

Like I said above, I'm not talking about air bags in my above-quoted post; I don't feel sufficiently qualified or experienced. I've never had an air bag go off, but from the data I see, even though I would prefer a better seatbelt, or keep the three point seat belts and get better tires with the money, I'm not disconnecting any air bags. The data on the whole for setting off an automobile air bag based on collision impact seems to be good enough.

However, as to keeping bindings un-released, I may not be the best one to judge (as I said above, once I know my leg is broken, it's a little late), but at least I might be able release the skis before hitting the netting. And I'm not trusting some computer program(er) analyzing my motion to decide I would be better off without skis. That would be like trusting a computer to not let me over-ride it and stop my passenger airplane from falling out of the ski, or trust my car's automatic braking to not force me to run into that big bear chasing the small deer, or running over something blocking my escape route. I can foresee and understand a lot of resistance to that technology.

 

[Average Joe]

The sport of downhill racing has changed significantly in the "modern" (I'll say post plastic boot and Fiberglas/metal ) era, and it's hard to put the genie back in the bottle.
If we wanted to return to the older, "safer" era, we could- but we'd have to turn the clock back -and:
-Eliminate snowmaking, instead use the Austrian Army to shovel snow from out of the woods in lean years.
- Hand prepare, with no water injection, the track surfaces. The ruts and washboard surfaces would help slow down top speeds.
- Prohibit tight fitting speed suits, instead allow fabrics which create much more friction if a racer falls.
- Limit ski tune /preparation equipment technology.
-Specify skis with 60 -75 meter turning radius, and train young racers to transition with an upward extension and use a skidded carved turn.
- Limit athlete on snow time and strength training.
And so on. I'm not trying to be a smart ass, just pointing out that there are many factors which have combined to make the sport more risky.
Can "B" nets be improved? Probably, but be careful, improvements in one aspect may come at an expense of another (of course, B nets are a huge hassle to set and maintain, so if anyone has any good ideas, there are thousands who are ready to listen!).