TheTruth

Dude, if your foot measures 27.3 cm, and you are buying an 11 street shoe, you are buying your shoes a size to a size and a half too big! 27 cm approx. equals an US size 9 mens shoe. Regardless, the important thing to remember is that ski or hardboot sizing has ***nothing*** to do with street shoe sizing. The most importing thing is sizing your foot to the internal shell of the boot. The easiest way to do that is to pull the liner and slide your foot into the shell. With your toes just touching the front, you should only have 1 to 1 1/2 fingers space from your heel to the back of the shell. Anything more is too big. Shells are generally made only on the 1/2 size, so a size 26 boot and 26.5 boot use the same shell (26.5) Here's why many people who have a US 9 or 9 1/2 foot (27 cm length) use a 26.5 shell. The stated shell size has ***nothing*** to do with the actual ***internal** shell measurement!!. Just about every "26.5" shell made measures internally 27.5 cm!! So people with a 27cm size foot fit inside with a nice, firm performance fit. They can even go down another shell size (25.5 shells measure 26.5 internally) if they have a good bootfitter who can grind and stretch the shell. Racers often do this to get the highest performance fit, but for most people downsizing that small, with all the related boot streching and grinding may be overkill. I know this is confusing to many people, so the best bet is to have a good bootfitter. If that is not possible, then the 1 to 1 1/2 finger rule I stated earlier works pretty well for a performance fit.

Step 1: Throw those suckers away NOW! Step 2: Buy new boots NOW! Your long term health may depend upon it. Step 3: If in doubt, refer to Step 1.

YEP, the entire mountain is terminal intermediate heaven. Just a bunch of bulldozed and blasted cruisers. But that can still be fun if you want to cruise around. But, it is in no way a challenging mountain. To be honest, I believe Flattons only FIS homologation is for USSA Masters level (for us old timers LOL) GS and SL events. That means the place isn't qualified to hold a true World Cup ski event, even something as short as a SL. IIRC, there are only 2 trails in the east homologated for FIS speed events: The downhill run at White Face, and Narrow Guage at Sugarloaf. Even those two trail are considered very tame by FIS ski racing standards.

They were not FIS ski downhill sets. I don't know how many times I need to state this. It is clear you have never competed in a ski racing speed event.

Dude, if you consider anything at Flatton "steep and gnarly" for racing you have absolutely no clue what "steep and gnarly" means for a ski racer. :lol:

LOL. I'm actually more fond remembering of what happened after the races in my career. Especially after the U.S. Opens, but that is another story. Snowboard "Downhills" may have been held on FIS downhill runs, but the course set was nothing like a FIS ski downhill. What you consider being a snowboard downhill is at best a fast open set FIS GS for ski racers. Like I said, been there, seen it and done it. Like I said, if you want to restart that type of snowboard racing, I'm all for it. Personally, I prefer the traditional GS/Super G format to the PGS stuff we see now. But equating a Snowboard "Downhill" to a FIS ski Downhill is just plain silly.

LOL Bob, I guess I better keep looking over my shoulder for the irate Flatton Village People. I don't know what's more comical; People getting mad when somebody calls Flatton non-challenging, or calling any race held at Flatton a "Downhill". I've seen WalMart parking lots with steeper gradients than that place.

Exactly right. Hey guys, I'm not trying to be a prick about this. I love to snowboard race. I also love to ski race. I've done both for years. I got the injuries to prove it. Like I said earlier, if you haven't run a ski Downhill, you simply can not imagine what it is like at those speeds, on those courses. When things go wrong, they go very wrong, very quickly.

What you seem to miss is that I have been racing a LONG time, both skis and snowboards. As far as the the snowboard side of things, I was a regular in the Green Mountain Series back in the late 80's through the late 90's, did the U.S. Open 7 times, and hit a number of the so called snowboard "speed events" my friend Gilmore spoke about earlier. I've also raced in 4 World Cup GS events back in the day when we used the two run traditional GS format. A snowboard "Super G" or "Downhill" is set like a open FIS skiing GS at best with similar overall speeds. I've "been there and done it" and the overall speed we carried is nowhere near the overall speed you carry in a skiing Super G or Downhill (been there and done that too... have you?). Hey, if you want to restart those type of races, I'm all for it. I actually don't like the PGS and PS format anyway. What I'm talking about being dangerous on a board is a real FIS skiing downhill set, on a water injected course, with the same distance between gates, the same blind turns where the only way of knowing where the gate is located is from memory, the same insane fall aways, and the same 80-90 mph speeds. Start running those for snowboards, and I guarantee you will see people seriously hurt.

No. Head race skis are really nice. A good combination of power and forgiveness. Of course, at the World Cup level the brand of skis the big name players use is based on sponsorship money. Racer's skis are all hand built, custom made to what they like and are fast on, so the brand name is meaningless. At that level they all are on great skis.

Jack, all the race skis have plates under the bindings. The 2 reasons they may not seem as prominent as in the past: 1. FIS has reduced the total stack height to protect racer's knees. 2. Ski waists are now wider across all disciplines, therefore binding plates don't need to be as high to prevent boot-out. Visually, the wider skis make the plates look even shorter.

I wholeheartedly agree with you on that.

Picture a trail that is uneven in contour both down the hill, and left to right. As you are making a high speed turn through this contour at first you may get pulled both downward and to the right, but at some point (while making the same direction turn around the gate) the contour may suddenly change and you get pulled downward and to the left. These gates are difficult to set up for correctly at speed because in a fraction of a second you are getting pulled 3 different ways. In this day and age, it is actually difficult to find these trails at resorts in the U.S. because management has bulldozed and blasted these features flat into one fall line (downward) to accommodate the teaming masses of terminal intermediate skiers and boarders (Think Flattton Vt.).

Apparently none the racing organizations agree with you regarding the safety of speed events for snowboards. :rolleyes: Look, I'm not missing the point here. I think many of us have made insanely fast runs on our board and walked away to tell the tale about it. But that is different than an organized season long schedule of speed events, that I honestly believe that most people WOULDN'T end up walking away from without serious injury due to the inherent diminished stability characteristics of having both feet strapped to one board at that speed. Like it or not, the current PGS and PS structure is not going away in snowboard racing.

Big difference in going fast on a perfectly straight run, and in going fast in a Downhill with 4 to 5 G force blind turns, fall-aways where you are off the ground the length of a football field, and "straight aways" that have double and triple fall lines. No doubt a person can slide fast on a board. The problem with running a board in a true Downhill is the transitions you must make to stay balanced at 80 to 90+ MPH. It is just so freaking hard to do that with both feet strapped to one board. Having a "perfectly groomed" slope as some have suggested won't help that much when you are dealing with the turns, fall-aways, and multiple fall lines at a speed that covers the length of a football field in 2.2 seconds. Honestly, do you guys really want to try this on a board? <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVkPG7KnbgQ&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVkPG7KnbgQ&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>