If you have never been to an elite level halfpipe skiing competition, by all means, head up to Aspen/Snowmass this weekend for the third stop of The Honda Ski Tour (THST) and check out one of the most dynamic and athletic displays of skiing on the planet.
If you can’t make it, don’t worry. Here’s what’s going to happen: An American will win. (If you need specifics, Tanner Hall will drop into the pipe backward, or switch, just as he did at the U.S. Open, Winter X Games and Breckenridge Ski Tour events, throw a 1080 and proceed to link a series of hyper-technical spins and grabs through the remainder of the pipe. Simon Dumont will jump farther out of the superpipe than you imagined humanly possible, linking his own mega-technical line but without the switch entrance. And Peter Olenick will leave you lifting your jaw off the snow after witnessing his awe-inspiring double “whiskey flip” that sends him rocketing some 40 feet down the pipe, upside down. Then everyone but the winner will complain about the judging.)
How do I know? Mostly because that’s the way it always happens. It’s the way it’s designed. Or perhaps I should say, the way it isn’t.
New School freeride skiing is sort of the snowsports equivalent of Eminem – white, loud, freeform artistry that doesn’t always translate into other languages. It garners accolades every year for its progression and experimental approach to an otherwise traditional activity. Comparisons to the former upstart sport of snowboarding are common, typically with the qualifier that “skiers go way bigger in the pipe,” and for that reason ought to be sanctioned – like snowboard superpipe – as an Olympic discipline.
But I’m here to tell you that isn’t going to happen in this Olympic cycle. At least not the way things stand in the sport right now.
While it’s true that skiercross – the other elite-caliber contest you can see at THST in Aspen this weekend – was recently named as a medal sport at the Olympics in 2010, it holds an advantage over the similarly nascent sport of superpipe skiing in its racing roots that readily translate to a largely European Olympic audience. Former ski racers from countries the world over are coming out of retirement to compete in a format that anyone can understand – first one to the bottom wins.
Pipe skiers, on the other hand, remain mired in their own independence, lacking both the history and the cohesive structure to establish it as the worldwide phenomenon its most devoted disciples would have you believe it is. Unlike snowboarding, which was banished to the halfpipes some 20 years before skiers recognized it as “cool,” pipe skiing has yet to establish the critical mass or judging criteria necessary to fully legitimize it in the eyes of the International Olympic Committee.
That’s not to say that Olympic sub-organizations such as the International Skiing Federation (FIS) and the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association (USSA) aren’t trying. They have taken the initial steps of incorporating halfpipe competition into a handful of World Cup contests and even the FIS Freestyle World Championships this season, but few participants are biting.
There are fewer than 150 ranked pipe skiers on the World Cup, including 36 women (and four men hailing from the winter sports mecca of Great Britain – the same nation responsible for ski jumping legend Eddie “The Eagle” Edwards). Almost 90 percent of them call the U.S., Canada, France or Switzerland home, while the skiing nations of Austria, Germany and Italy, to name a few, remain conspicuous in their absence.
Not that it really matters, since equally conspicuous in their absence are the top Americans – skiers such as Dumont, Hall and Olenick – who have dominated events like Winter X and THST for the past four years due, as much as anything, to a lack of competition in a sport in which they essentially determine their own rules.
Perhaps the four-stop THST, with its $250,000 annual prize purse and USSA affiliation, will change everything, motivating a new generation the world over to drop in and establish a new pipe paradigm complete with cohesive judging criteria that everyone can agree upon. But it better hurry.
Legitimacy is only three years away.
Staff writer Scott Willoughby can be reached at 303-954-1993 or swilloughby@denverpost.com.
