It wasn’t long ago that the founders of Ski Cross felt that an important principle of the event is that there be no race suits. The first competitors of Ski Cross were anti- establishment, Big Mtn. Free riders, that wouldn’t be caught dead in a race suit. For years there has been a ban on Lycra material. Apparently I didn’t get the memo on the rule change that the FIS has implemented, effectively lifting the ban on Lycra.

If the rules aren’t written well you are bound to have numerous interpretations. The French and the Austrians have interpreted the rules in a way that is putting us all back into the suits that were so detested by the founders. It seems to me that the FIS is taking steps to ruin the sport and lifting the ban on suits is just the beginning.

The other problem I am struck by as we enter the first race of the season is the course build. I don’t think the people that are designing and building the course are actually skiing it. My experience racing in Europe is the course designers don’t understand that you have to match the landing to the take off. So what we have is “cheese wedge” type jumps that send us high into the air and have us land on a virtual flat.

The trajectory and the landing are bad enough. Then a little gem of a move that the Austrians in St. Johann have added is water injection. They have injected the whole course with water, making it an ice rink. This might be okay through the turns to take down on course deterioration, but they have included the landings. So now we come down from two stories onto a flat landing that is prepared with bone crushing ice. It’s rather painful, and I’m sure that the folks that came over from Kitzbuhel to prepare the course with water would refrain from icing the landings if they had to run the course themselves.

I am mystified at the ignorance and the lack of organization for these events. But at the moment my competitors and I have no choice but to accept all of the miss-steps of the FIS and these ridiculous courses because this is our only tour and it is the only road to Vancouver. So it’s time to suck it up and go compete, no matter what the conditions. I miss Corley Howard’s courses, the Ski Tour, and the Jeep King of the Mountain. Thank god we still have the X Games!

This entry was posted on Monday, January 5th, 2009 at 8:02 am and is filed under caseypuckett. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.