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Gtanner

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  1. Olympics - inside look at SBX/SX/PGS

    in Racing

    Posted

    Disclaimer: these are personal observations only, the spelling of peoples names are likely wrong.

    Although it rained on us a lot, and my body is still tired, I can still say that I had the pleasure of working at the SBX/SX/PGS events at the Olympics over the past month . I was one of the course section leaders and had a crew working for me on course shaping and maintenance (I was the guy in the blue coat :)). I thought it would be fun to give some tid-bits of information that the general public may or may not have known about.

    For all events; Course maintenance folks had about one minute to get into the course, shape/clean/repair gates and run out of camera range after every rider…it was pretty rough and tiring (as the snow got super mushy and heavy). And the entire world revolves around TV time. The OBS (Olympic Broadcast System) group were awful! Walking on shaped features, falling on course when they shouldn’t even be there…they were something all right!

    SBX

    • Lindsay Jacobellis was in a crappy mood day of the race. She was pretty snippy with the course workers as we attempted to keep them off the race line during inspection for snow preservation. While riding, she was rather vocal in that it didn’t seem like she was doing well at gauging her speed.

    • We fertilized the whole course for the ladies only, so the girls seemed faster, while the guys were working for speed through a few mushy-sections

    • Helen Olafsen (sp?) broke a board on jump #3 and noticed something was wrong after a few more features. She stopped and a volunteer named Rob gave her his board and bindings so that she could make it through the rest of the course and get her back-up board at the top. This was race-day. In the end she gave him the old broken board (Kessler) as a souvenir, plus he got kisses from the entire Norwegian team as a thank-you.

    • The course is set by FIS, not coaches as is the case with PGS

    • Each rider used the terrain differently, which was cool to see.

    • Maelle took a few runs to get the course dialed. I think she only took the big jumps during one of the training sessions.

    • Dominic Maltais never looked comfortable. And once we found out how she was feeling and how bad the training crash was, we knew why.

    • Mike Robertson looked the smoothest in the course out of all competitors (male or female). Seth Wescott looked good, but didn’t look comfortable. Nate Holland was fighting the course all day. Drew Nielson dropped his shoulder on the wrong turn. Rob Fagan had a good day aswell. Graham Watanabe looked good, but it didn’t seem like he could get any speed…wax issue?

    • The girls had no real trouble with the features (aside from a few on the Woo-Tangs). The female forerunners were good enough to have cleared the jumps. They were just scared/nervous. One girl did start taking them at speed later in training.

    • The two wooden jumps were nicknamed the “money-booters” as they cost a fortune, had to be rush-built and delivered via helicopter.

    • The snow-helicopter cost $10,000/hr and the lift couldn’t be working while it was in the air.

    SX

    • What a difference SBX to SX. The skiers were a bit more pompous and had a sense of entitlement…except the French ladies and Ashleigh McIvor. She was always smiling and chatting with the course workers while she did inspection

    • The chief of comp was also a bit of an a$$ for SX, but that’s a story for another time

    • The male skiers were all complaining about how big the banked turns were…and complaining about how the FIS course setters put the gates too high into the berm…so they actually had to use the berm (heaven forbid)

    • I argued a number of times with the setters about their sets on the berms. They would set the first gate loose (low on the bank), and the second tight (higher on the bank). This slowed down the skiers quite a bit and created a kink in the berm… On my berm alone, the setter spent about 2 hours drilling about 30 holes to decide on how to set… Essentially they were setting the course like a GS, versus setting with the flow of the course.

    • All the skiers took the exact same line…during the knockouts, many would actually brake slightly so that they could get into the race-line…and there was pretty much no experimentation with the various race lines in training. So on TV, there wasn’t much passing.

    • Duncan fell out of the start gate during training. Instead to relaxing for a minute and trying to figure out what happened, he went back to the gate and did it again, same fall but this time with a broken collar-bone.

    • The second-last jump (where Del-Bosco fell) was re-shaped for the guys the night before the race. Although they were allowed to inspect/train on it for a run or two the morning of the race, many didn’t seem to be ready for the amount of kick it gave out.

    PGS

    • Both days, we salted the snot out of the course. So much so that it was a sheet of ice whereby the water was running down the slope.

    • Mark Fawcett set the ladies course, and the French coach (Guilaum something) did the mens.

    • The Dutch girl took that course perfectly. She was dialed in from the first gate all day. She was smooth and aggressive. It was an absolute pleasure to watch.

    • Michelle Gorgone rode well. She was very very aggressive (which makes the ruts more fun to deal with). She just got bucked on a few gates each run.

    • Kimi never got into her rhythm and unfortunately fell

    • Alexa looked good, but didn’t seem to be riding to her potential.

    • Based on the smoothest rider of the day Benny Karl should have won. Jasey got into a grove after the 1/8th finals, before that, he seemed to be fighting the course.

    • Morrison looked good, just not his usual form.

    • The Russian guys yelled/growled and probably swore down the entire course.

    • For both days, visibility was about 2 gates ahead

    • They wouldn’t let me forerun for the guys (no FIS license anymore). But I would have loved to run the mens course.

    • The red course was faster both days

    • The course workers were completely soaked, and the sandwiches we were getting were awful!

    HP

    • The only thing I knew/heard was that the walls were not totally vert for the last few feet (like they were at the X-games). This was for snow/wall preservation. Once the riders figured this out, they started ollieing harder off the lip and had the pipe dialed.

    All in all, an awesome experience. It’s very cool to say that you were directly involved in 3 Gold medals and a Silver for Canada. It was fun wandering around in the wax cabin seeing all the boards being prepped. By the end, I needed a real vacation (3:30 am wake-ups and 12 hours on-hill is definitely draining).

    -Gord

  2. Engineering major?

    in The Lodge

    Posted

    This is also the single most annoying thing about engineers to women, so choose wisely.

    I'm also an engineer (chemical/process) working in the Oil Sands in Canada. My wife is also an engineer which makes this issue less of a concern. :)

    To the question at hand. Pre-calculus will help with the first term. Like someone else said, Calculus and Physics in first year engineering are the weed-out classes, so take as much as you can (even a night class or some extra tutoring with a teacher at your school). It may seem silly at the time and your friends may make fun of you, but you'll be thanking your lucky stars come mid-terms in the fall.

    In our first Physics class, we were told to look to our left and right...and say good bye since they won't make it out of the first term. Usual engineering drop-out rate in Canada is ~50% in the first term, another 10-20 leave after the end of the first year due to the high workload. I'm not trying to scare you here. People have trouble with dealing with the highschool to university gap the first term. After that, it's a matter of handling the workload. Most engineers manage to fit some fun in aswell. My personal though was that I could go on a tear one night a week...not four.

    Would I do it again, absolutely. Was it tough, for sure. Do I enjoy what I do YES. And I even managed to find my future wife...

  3. Did something stupid

    in Carving Central

    Posted

    I was riding my new Coiler in Whistler a few weeks back and accidentally hit the heel edge against the metal lift-line poles...I too a quick look and nothing looked damaged, so I continued on with the day.

    When I got home, I found that the edge had depressed into the base slightly which has caused a slight "bubble" on the base near the edge (about 1 cm into the base from the edge)... I don't want to grind it out as it will leave a thin-spot.

    I'm not worried about performance as I'm just free-riding on the board, just reliability of the board...plus am a bit pissed that I did this on the boards second day out!:smashfrea

    I managed to wreck my camera while working in the rain at Cypress for the Olympics, so no pics for now.

    Thoughts? Has anyone else done this before?

    -Gord

  9. outward cant

    in Carving Central

    Posted

    I'm also curious about outward canting.

    My front leg tends to kill me after a good 3-4 hours of riding (mostly my quads). I think I just keep it flexed too much and am not as dynamic with my front leg compression and extension throught the turns. I'm trying to work on it (now have .5-1 deg inward), so we'll see if my new coiler requests a slight tweek in my riding style (for the better of course). I'm debating going outward a bit though to shift my weight.

    -Gord

  12. Lambert wins again!

    in Racing

    Posted

    Last year while working at the world cup at Cypress, it was very cold and dry...so dry that they couldn't hold the PGS race due to snow conditions.

    Although Vancouver can have a reputation, one thing that we can't predict is the weather (unless you fire special missles into the air to make it rain like in Beijing). They will make it work, my thought is that the best snow-minds in the world are looking into this to make sure that the venue has the best possible snow conditions for the events.

  13. Alexa Loo WEBSITE

    in Racing

    Posted

    I agree with Boris.

    I took that run at speed a few times last year and if you carry a ton of speed into the zig-zag things could get interesting.

    At the base of the first pitch as it turns right, the change from pitch to flat is quite dramatic, so depending on how the race course is set, it could turn into a rutted-up compression as racers push late through the turn.

    If they set the gate at the apex of the roller as you turn left, then we'll definately see some carnage as some racers will either load the nose and launch off or will try to suck it up and land heading skiers left completely extended.

    I took that last rooler on a hard heel-side and launched across the hill...depending on how you line it up and where the next downhill gate is...could be make-or-break for the race.

    I'm very interested to see how they set this course. The zig-zag in the course will likely result in one course being somewhat faster (which would totally change the head-to-head game). I'm also thinking that it may be a course that is partial to either a regular or goofy-footed rider depending on how the gates are set at each turn.

    -Gord

  19. softboot bindings for carving

    in Carving Central

    Posted

    At the moment, I have a set of Technine Pro's. Before them I was on some older Flows. Technine makes a decent binding, but it isn't uber-stiff (although my older boots aren't helping either). I can definately still rail with them though.

    I got them at an end of year sale, ugly as sin, but the sub 200$ couldn't be beat.

    -Gord

  21. Wheely Bag

    in Want to Buy

    Posted

    Before I go looking around the internet for a new bag, does anyone have a padded wheely bag lying around? Looking for at least 185cm length.

    If not, does anyone know of any deals out there?

    Thanks,

    Gord

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