Jibjumper t1_jbqdpq6 wrote on March 10, 2023 at 10:18 PM

Reply to comment by 24PercentMajority in Mikaela Shiffrin gets her record 86th World Cup victory by Jokobib

Oh I’m not denying that, or saying racers can’t ski other terrain. I’ve been skiing since I was 2, grew up 15 minutes from Park City, had friends growing up that were professional skiers/boarders, worked in the industry for 15 years. I’m not trying to be uncle Rico saying I could throw a ball over them mountains. I would say I’m a very competent skier, and because of that I recognize how huge the gap is between what I can do versus a pro.

That doesn’t change the fact that some of the best big mountain skiers could be top competitors in racing if they tried, but doing what Candide does is in a different class. It takes a certain kind of person and skiing is so much more than gates, so I’m not knocking what they do, but race results only mean you’re the best racer.

BM_3K t1_jbrn5sx wrote on March 11, 2023 at 4:19 AM

One, there's no way to objectively determine who "the best skier" is overall, so it's really just a silly topic. On the flip side racing produces concrete results so deciding who the best ski racer is is a much more manageable thing (you did make a distinction between best skier and best racer here). Second, I really don't think many pro big mountain skiers could switch to racing and be competitive at a pro level. There is so much that goes into technique and skiing in a race course no matter the discipline requires you to be near perfect and then some. I just don't see anyone that hasn't been seriously training in race courses their whole life to stand a chance against pro racers.

Jibjumper t1_jbrpo0z wrote on March 11, 2023 at 4:43 AM

So I raced in high school, was on the mogul team, and skied park and big mountain regularly. I never took competition too seriously because I saw the gap between my level and the top .01% and didn’t care enough about those disciplines to push hard in any one direction. I was friends with a lot of skiers that were racers and I worked as a liftee on the night crew at Park City when the racers would do their training. I watched Sarah Burke’s crash that ultimately took her life and called it into ski patrol while working on Three Kings lift. I’ve been surrounded by ski culture my entire life.

Like I said not every all mountain skier could be a racer, but it would be easier for an expert non racer to get into racing, than someone that focused on racing growing up trying to get into big mountain/park skiing. When you know what you’re looking for it’s really easy to pick out who the former racers are from the lift than people with a racing background. Racing requires a different technique that changes your style and it’s hard to break those habits. I personally know people that switched focus to raving later in life and vice versa, and the general consensus from both groups is that it’s harder to unlearn racing than it is to learn.

It makes sense for something like car racing to consider the best driver someone that exceeds in racing (despite there being many types of driving), because cars are more or less designed to operate on a road/track. With skiing it’s different because you have the freedom to go anywhere and do anything. It’s a whole different beast to do things like drop a cliff, straight line a face in Alaska, or have enough control to throw a trick while skiing through trees. It’s much more subjective, but anyone that has some real experience skiing can pick out what a next level skier looks like. Racing still takes a ton of discipline and I’m not diminishing the accomplishment. Like I said being the best racer is just that, being the best racer, but it doesn’t mean they’re the best skier.