philfell

Thanks for posting up marc. Glab to hear things are going well. 110/220 if thing were only that simple. First you do have to. Have some support of the national governing body to progress in the sport. They are the one who enter the riders into world cups. They can even decide to not enter anyone if they choose. The ioc has minimum criteria you must meet if you want to go to the olympics. This is based on world cup performance. So if you do not get any world cups starts it is impossible to meet this criteria. Do you need their support to progress your skills....no. but at some point you must have their blessing to reach the top of the sport. You are right that they must put in writing a team qualifing criteria before the olympics. But this is a SNOWBOARD TEAM qualifing criteria. If they do not want to send any alpine athletes they do not have to even if they have open quota spots. They just have to word the criteria to include HP and SBX leave out PGS and there is your selection criteria.

great video Sean!!! I'm glad to see Bomber and Sean offering plate set ups that are truely state of the art. For those who are naysaying the advantages of plates and think that they are only good for racers please go back a 4 years and read the threads about metal board construction and look at what people are riding and prefering now. Plate systems are a huge leap forward and now you can get them here in the US easy by simply calling Sean or Fin. Good job guys.

I always liked watching Masaki ride the steeps. It's SOOOOOOOOOO important for the extension to happen after the edge change. If you extend at the end of the turn before the edge change it's impossible to get early pressure established. Think of standing on a scale it you bend your knees real fast you take weight (pressure) off the scale. If you already have your kneed bent and extend them real fast you add weight (pressure) to the scale. So if you are extending just before the edge change and flexing just after the edge change you are pressuring the end of your turn and taking pressure away from the top of the turn. This usually leads to chatter in the middle to end of the turn, because there is such a spike in pressure when you bottom out and hit all the pressure at once mid turn. Never heard it called "midweighting" before.....Cross over, cross under, cross through.....Reminds me of the Happy Gilmore line. "Red Jacket, Green Jacket who gives a s**t" as long as you keep moving downhill to the finish line.

$680 is a pretty good price point that Sean is offering, I'd for sure look into that.

Personally I feel that you are asking too much from a single snowboard. SBX boards rip on groomers and rail turns "almost" as good as a decent plate set up.....But they certainly are not powder boards. Most have too blunted noses to provide good float in pow. Kesslers do ride OK in powder, but are fragile and prone to bending if landing in powder too far forward. I would stear clear is you can only afford one. Oxess are awesome boards, some would argure that they ride better then the Kesslers, they are certainly more durable too. But the nose shape is pretty bad for any powder riding. I would contact Marciel at Oxess and see how much he would do a custom shape for you too add some nose to make the boards better for off-piste. Your probably looking at around 1100 Swiss francs for that set up. Prior does not really make a real SBX focused board. The other boards you mentioned are so different that it's hard to even compare them to eachother.

The increase to 8 riders for the CSF is great. What most people do not know is that this year the FIS added Slopestyle as an event, but did NOT increase the team size. So in years past the 24 rider total team size was split between mens/womens SBX, HP, and Alpine. This year the same 24 team size is split between SBX, HP, Alpine AND SBS. In the US we had to cut the size of the all the previous events HP, SBX, and Alpine to accomidate the SBS crew. It was tough for some of the kids, but these are the harsh realities of the sport. Kind of like Palmer and Powers both podiuming at WC's in an Olympic year and not being able to go to the Olympics.

Maybe we should be wearing HP clothes. The HP riders do go faster than the PGS riders, as do the SBXers. Snowboard "racing" is the slowest event for snowboarding, other than slopestyle. The hills are pretty flat these days, when they are steep the courses are set very round so that there is seperation in times. When you are straight lining down the hill you are going MUCH faster than you would be going in PGS. We stand different then they do in skiing. We have a huge air cavity between our legs, that skiers do not. A pant with material helps to fill this cavity, similar to why speed skiers wear baffles on the back of their boots. The riders who are fighting this rule are the ones who are stuck in an old way of thinking and are not willing to actually look at the sport or the science, or they simply do not have any real experience with the sport, sorry USASA does not count as real experience in PGS or PSL. The only problem I have with the new rule is that they had to make it a rule. I don't want to our sport to become dominated by making rules to drive the sport in certain directions. Keep in mind that this is coming from a FIS TD. Like Seb said Jasey has won WC's with normal clothes. He was not wearing baggy paint down to his knees, usually just comfy fitting pants and a good soft shell or form-fitting jacket. The part about protecting the "culture" of the sport is a term that the SBX crew has been saying for years. Many of them came from an alpine background and have wittnessed where alpine has gone and they do not want the same for SBX. The Jeep tour was a great money maker for many alpine riders, but they had to change the format because of TV ratings. Guys in speed suits hitting jumps, did not sell to the snowboard public. Snowboarding came for a different place than ski racing and we should remember that in order to keep our sport a viable way for the talented athletes to earn a living.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/sports/skiing/18ski.html?pagewanted=all You'll love this.

That Rossi you are looking at is probably older then the asym you rode last. I'd suggest passing on the Rossi, saving up over the summer and get something a bit more up to date. No need to buy a 15 year old board this time of year, unless it has some sort of personal meaning to you. The wind boots are not that bad, as long as they fit properly.

My advice to you would be to upgrade your binding and board set up before looking into the new plates. Get on a current race board and on to some TD3's or some F2's. Spend a season getting that set up dialed. Then look into plate designs. By the way, the US team did not use a canoe paddle. The plate you saw that Casanova had was a new prototype and was not used during the season. The plate Trappy used this year was all metal. If you think 700-800 is too expensive, then you don't have to buy one. But look at how much a high end race ski cost before you call out price gouging.

A couple of quick comments. First I'm super bummed that US Snowboarding has done this. We have all seen it coming for years, but now that is has happened it's sad. Unfortunatly though this is still to be announced at the meetings in a few weeks, it will happen regardless of what we say or how we feel about it. The best thing we can do is to use the reasources we have available and make the sport better. Yeah that's right we can make the sport better. We don't need to write someone else and ask them to do it for us. Second ANYONE can host an alpine event and have it sanctioned through FIS. Local ski clubs host FIS events all the time. It is not the job of the US Ski Team to put on local events. We need to step it up on this front. There needs to be more people at local resorts and with clubs willing to put on a few alpine events each year. This would be a huge help and would REALLY make a differance. As of now it is really only Steamboat who is stepping it up on this front. Man without the work of Casanova, Thedo, and Jon Casson and thier willingness to put on alpine events who knows how bad of shape we would be in right now.

Yeah Artic Man!!!!!!!! That race is so cool, I've been wanting to check it out for years. Glad to see Ryan was able to hold off the soft booters this year. Looking at the times though it appears that your guy Hammond did get beat by a soft boot girl......Tell him to step it up next year.

There is no FIS rule regarding gender of forerunner. But they all must be affiliated with the FIS. I was not at the event, so I can not comment on what was happening behind the scenes with the athletes. I wish I had more gossip, but I don't. All the build up over the last 4 years...........and now we start is all over again. I do know that the US SBX guys and girls will be in the hunt for 2014. Many of the current crew is going to continue on and we have a young crew who is going to push the top guys if they want to stay on top.

Ekat is a high level racer with World Cup experience and won a Europa Cup race this season. I would say that this puts her far above you on the forerun priority list.

A few days training at Howelsen Hill with the Steamboat crew, will make the race hill at Copper feel like the bunny slope. This oppertunity is will worth it, in my opinion.

Michell qualified 13th. She's down by .3 after the first run in the finals.

The reason ski binding release, it to help prevent spiral fractures of the tibia. This is not an issue with snowboarding. No need to release from a snowboard, as far as I can see.

Snowboarding is a dangerous sport, you can limit and/or minimize the risk of injury, but you can not totally eliminate it. Sometimes injuries happen that can not have been avoidable. It seems to me that you may be over thinking/looking for something to blame your injury on.

Nope we were too busy coaching, the riders did some interviews before they got back on the lift, and the Sugar Bowl marketing guy, John did most of the talking.

They had thier names printed on the back of their jerseys......It probably violated some IOC rule so they had to cover it up.

At the World Cup most of the lables on our waxes are either taken off or mis-labeled.

Second Jack rec. The best way to pick a board is to ride some. Go to the east coast expression session and try out a bunch of boards, ask people there who rip questions.

Good luck getting the answer to that question. Wax techs on the world cup are about as secretive as they come. Some don't tune until late at night so that other techs can't see what they are waxing with.

A short clip of our team training at Sugar Bowl http://www.kcra.com/video/22618236/index.html

Him and Puckett were training on Mon and Tues at Sugar Bowl on the course we have there. They both were charging hard and are ready for the Olympics. Rhalves said he was a bit sore, but it didn't effect his skiing. He was going full tilt through a high G turn on his bad hip....He's ready.