Las Vegas – Sidnie Doyle was quite lonely 15 years ago.
Her Oregon company, Crash Pads, was the only maker of padded gear for skiers. It was not an easy sell.
“The first couple years, we were just selling a concept,” she says. “People were like: ‘Hip pads? For skiers? What? Why?”‘
Today, Doyle is no longer alone. More than two dozens companies have jumped on the padded skier bandwagon and are touting all sorts of plastic-plated and protective armor for skiers and snowboarders.
Motocross riders have been girded with breastplates, shoulder pads, shin guards and full-faced helmets since they first twisted a throttle on dirt. Skiers, on the other hand, are barely a decade into wearing helmets.
But the prevalence of helmeted winter skiers has prodded more and more companies to test how far the snow riders will go to protect themselves.
At the annual Snowsports Industries America trade show last month, more companies than ever unveiled turtle-like back protectors, thigh and shin guards, shirts packed with plates and pads, elbow pads, hip-padded shorts, forearm shields, motocross-styled helmets and even knee braces designed to prevent injuries as opposed to prevent the agitation of an existing injury.
“This is a new world for us,” says Darryl Atkins, a sales manager for California-based Asterisk, which visited the ski world’s trade show for the first time last month with its high-tech knee brace that is ubiquitous in the world of motocross. “We saw that everyone was destroying their careers with knee injuries, and we feel an obligation to get these to the athletes not just protect to themselves, but to protect the sport.”
A pair of Asterisk’s glide-hinged, thermo-formed, knee-padded braces – the burliest leg protection out there – runs $550.
Going out to play hard without a pair of these, says Atkins, is akin to “not putting on a helmet to ride now.”
Therein lies the pitch of the padded promoters: Isn’t your safety worth a few bucks?
It’s hard to argue with that.
If you’ve ever brushed a tree or smacked your chin or melon while skiing, you know the value of a piece of armor that keeps you out of the dreaded patrol sled.
“The whole snow side is slowly catching on to where the motorized world has been for a long time, and they will be even soon enough – it’s just a matter of time,” says Conor Rowan with Sixsixone, a California body armor maker that has offered motocross and mountain-biking pads for six years but ventured into snowsports only two years ago.
Rowan, incidentally, sports a hefty cast on his arm while manning the Sixsixone booth at Vegas. He broke his wrist in a digger mountain biking without, he quickly notes, his company’s wrist guards.
“I’m a huge advocate of helmets and protection in general,” Rowan says. “It is an added boost of confidence, too.”
That “boost” troubles Jasper Shealy, a professor at New York’s Rochester Institute of Technology who has spent more than three decades studying ski injuries and death. Shealy’s studies have led him to the conclusion that use of a ski helmet can alter the behavior and possibly push skiers beyond their skill level.
While he has not studied anything about the prevalence of body armor in skiing – it is a new development – he compares it to hockey, where players used no pads in the early ’70s and are girded head to toe now. The medical consensus on the proliferation of pads in hockey, he says, is that it leads to a “gladiator syndrome” where players are more aggressive.
“Does that translate to skiing? I don’t know,” he says. “But it is certainly a distinct possibility. This feeling of invincibility is a concern that is always on my mind.”
Many of the most fortified skiers often scoff at Shealy’s assertions that helmets can lead to worse injuries. They point out that Shealy’s studies involve injuries within ski area boundaries, and many pad users are pushing their limits far from ropes and groomers.
Jared Allen, a former Boulder skier living in Utah, loves his full-faced helmet but says it has no influence on how he rides. The 28-year-old expert skier tried pads once but didn’t like the bulky feel. His helmet has not protected him from two concussions – suffered while getting inverted over scary-big cliffs – but he still doesn’t ski without it.
Allen’s most important piece of padding has nothing to do with skiing or any other action sport. It’s a mouth guard he bought for a few dollars.
“I also wear a mouth guard anytime I air something of a decent size. I heard it can help with concussions and that is why I started using it,” he says, noting he has gone three seasons with the mouthpiece and without a concussion. “It costs a couple bucks and is available at most any store … and it can save you thousands on dental costs.”
