- Joined
- Aug 24, 2017
- Posts
- 361
@CascadeConcrete. I get it. My main sport is climbing--ice climbing, mountaineering, alpine rock climbing, glacier travel, and so on. Before climbing, I did bicycle road racing for 15 years. Road racing and riding: now that's a sport where the very real risks are not always appreciated! Road riding/racing is way more dangerous than mountain biking, probably more dangerous than climbing. So, I do understand the risks, and the impossibility of completely eliminating risk in ski racing. But more could be done. And why wouldn't we want to do more?
Here is a simple idea: Make it illegal to hit, or even come close, to gates during races. Change the race course (a little) to accommodate the new turn shapes, paint different lines on the snow, and disqualify racers if they try to cut corners, so to speak, and come close to or hit gates. Athletes would adapt. Races would be safer. It wouldn't be much harder to set up courses, it wouldn't cost much money, and so on.
Here's another idea. I wish one of the big players (Atomic, Salomon, Volk, Head, whatever) would get onto the band wagon with a knee binding or something like it. Without getting into a whole debate about the knee bindings, its history, its pros and cons, the specific injuries it does and does not protect from, I think it's clear that designs such as the knee binding mitigate one kind of knee ligament injury, and adding another direction of release to bindings is a good idea. The skis stay on athletes feet because bindings such as this necessitate a dedicated right and left ski. The inside and outside edges of skis do different things anyway, so maybe the way forward would be a knee binding type mechanism, and dedicated right and left skis with appropriate shaping, edge profiles, tuning, and what not. If it prevented one ruptured ligament on the WC circuit per year, it would be worth the change. And if that technology trickled down to everyday skiers, it could make a real difference.
Here is a simple idea: Make it illegal to hit, or even come close, to gates during races. Change the race course (a little) to accommodate the new turn shapes, paint different lines on the snow, and disqualify racers if they try to cut corners, so to speak, and come close to or hit gates. Athletes would adapt. Races would be safer. It wouldn't be much harder to set up courses, it wouldn't cost much money, and so on.
Here's another idea. I wish one of the big players (Atomic, Salomon, Volk, Head, whatever) would get onto the band wagon with a knee binding or something like it. Without getting into a whole debate about the knee bindings, its history, its pros and cons, the specific injuries it does and does not protect from, I think it's clear that designs such as the knee binding mitigate one kind of knee ligament injury, and adding another direction of release to bindings is a good idea. The skis stay on athletes feet because bindings such as this necessitate a dedicated right and left ski. The inside and outside edges of skis do different things anyway, so maybe the way forward would be a knee binding type mechanism, and dedicated right and left skis with appropriate shaping, edge profiles, tuning, and what not. If it prevented one ruptured ligament on the WC circuit per year, it would be worth the change. And if that technology trickled down to everyday skiers, it could make a real difference.