Innsbruck, Austria – It was really frustrating to watch the second run of Sunday’s slalom at Beaver Creek on an overly tight course set by Croatian coach Ante Kostelic with the obvious objective to make guys go out of the race.
Eight of the 30 racers went out. When a course setter deliberately causes that kind of attrition – Kostelic does it to favor his son, Ivica – it’s lame for the athletes and everybody trying to promote the sport. It makes us look like jokers. It doesn’t let us show our athleticism if we’re sliding turns instead of arcing.
I think the sport should display our athleticism as much as possible instead of making us hack our way down a course.
Athletes have no say in the way the FIS operates. Now they’re saying next year we have to lower our boot and binding heights, and they’re changing regulations about the width of the ski under the foot. It’s going to take away leverage and impair our ability to arc turns.
It’s lame when you want your sport to be progressive and cutting edge, but the people who run it want to rewind it and make it old-school.
If you’re a skier or a fan of ski racing, you want to watch people ski in a manner you can’t. If you’re watching football and you see Reggie Bush pulling all these crazy moves, you love seeing that because you want to emulate that or you wish you could do something like that. It’s out of reach for you, and that’s why it’s entertaining.
I think slalom should display our athleticism and what we’re able to pull off instead of trying to hinder us for some alleged safety concern.
Guenther Hujara, the top FIS official for the men’s tour, says he doesn’t want racers arcing turns in slalom because he believes it raises the risk for knee injuries, but the only guy who has blown out his knee in slalom in the past few years is Kostelic.
If you set slalom right and let us make our own decisions on how we mount our bindings, you’d have us all laying ridiculous arcs, you’d have our hips almost on the snow on every turn. People watching would be like, “Whoa, what are those guys doing? How are they able to keep their rear ends 2 inches off the ground turn after turn after turn and make such quick transitions?” They’d be like, “I can’t do that, this is cool to watch.”
When we’re sliding half our turns, people are apt to say: “I can do that. Why should I watch this?”
