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Could a snowboard racer do the skiier downhill course?


carvin29

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The Olympic snowboarder downhill (using same course as skiers on a different day). WE DO NOT COMPETE AGAINST THEM. Let's get that straight right up front !

#1. perfectly groomed (before the snowboard runs being)

#2. no speed suits

#3. some gates repositioned.

do not see a problem with it, except that, the common "skier" downhill could be extremely unfair to some of us (ie; is it a "goofy" advantageous run or a "regular" run). that would not be cool.

Other than that, what's the big deal? Going fast on a perfect groomer? With "no wheels turning" the fastest speeds I have ever hit snowboarding "felt as fast" to me as cruising in a jetliner at 38,000.

Sic...

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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?

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Any proficient alpine snowboarder should be able to finish any downhill course.

It can be scary, but there is no logic contraindicating it.

I competed in snowboard downhills in the 1980s, some successfully, many unsuccessfully, including kitz, wengen and iron mountain and two '80s us opens.

anyone who attended US opens in the late '80s knows that snowboard downhills are a blast. the skillsets run counterintuitive to freecarving, though: flat board, mass remains over the deck, not inside/outside.

snowboard downhills are a lot of fun.

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The Olympic snowboarder downhill (using same course as skiers on a different day). WE DO NOT COMPETE AGAINST THEM. Let's get that straight right up front !

#1. perfectly groomed (before the snowboard runs being)

#2. no speed suits

#3. some gates repositioned.

There is no reason for a snowboard course to be "perfectly groomed". You are confusing freecarving with racing. Both are wonderful undertakings in their own right but they are different. you're discussing what you, personally, would require to ride a dh course, not what trained snowboard racers would.

downhill used to be my favorite event to compete in on my old 210 safari

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I have heard of a snowboard Super G but not a downhill. Could you imagine a snowboard downhill? It would be mad. Did you see how many women ski racers bought it at the bottom the the olympic downhill and how many men on the Super G run? I think a snowboard downhill would be half racers and half bodies strewn across the race course. It would be cool to watch but man you would have to have a set in order to race it. Obviously AlexJ, you have a set.

JT- snowboard downhills used to be common in my day.sometimes they called them "Super-G"s for insurance purposes. good snowboard racers have no problem with downhills, this less technical event is better suited for a non-stepping discipline.

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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>

(I can't see the video at work, but I assume it's an olympic DH course)

I think you're missing the point here - I and a few others who have spoken up KNOW it is doable because we DID it...

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I think you're missing the point here - I and a few others who have spoken up KNOW it is doable because we DID it...

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.

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...But that was not the question. The OP asked "Could a SB racer do the course?", not "should we bring back DH?"

A boarder could absolutely do that course. How fast and how safe is a different matter entirely. My last speed race was almost 20 years ago, so no way am I throwing myself down that pitch.

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"straight aways" that have double and triple fall lines.
I'm confused by these terms. Really there is only ever one fall line, although it may change as you go along. I've heard "double fall line" used to describe a run where the overall direction of the run is not parallel to the fall line so that in order to keep on course you are consistently edging in one direction. What's a "triple fall line"?
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I'm confused by these terms. Really there is only ever one fall line, although it may change as you go along. I've heard "double fall line" used to describe a run where the overall direction of the run is not parallel to the fall line so that in order to keep on course you are consistently edging in one direction. What's a "triple fall line"?

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.).

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I ran the Olympic D/H course on Mt Jahorina, a year after Sarajevo Olympics. It was on skis, on hero snow, no gates so I could pic any line I wanted. Back then, I was an amateur GS racer, much younger, crazier and arguably stronger... It was a pretty freaky experience.

No ways I would do it on a snowboard.

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Pffft .... Olypmic downhill course my ass. What a bunch of sissies! I'll be impressed when we've got guys hurling themselves down everest!

http://kottke.org/10/02/skiing-down-mount-everest

LOL ... okay, I hit the link and see that, yes, indeed, it's Yuichiro Miura ... and the quote on the page is from my interview with Miura for the article I just wrote :)

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/The-Godfather-of-Extreme-Skiing.html

Gotta love it when that happens ...

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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.

Trained snb. racers routinely raced dh events in the 1980s and 1990s.

I know of none that sustained "serious injury" as a result.

The removal of the DH, and then the SG from the US Open spelled the beginning of the end for snb. competition in the US. It's a shame because these were excellent events that sucked even the skiers off of the trails and assembled them along the course to watch.

What you seem to miss is the fact that having "both feet strapped to one board" reduces the risk of knee trauma, and higher speed events on hard surfaces allow for less blunt-force trauma, as DNF "sitters" simply slide, as opposed to have their forces stopped at the expense of bones and ligaments.

Snowboard DH was and is an exceptional sport.

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Trained snb. racers routinely raced dh events in the 1980s and 1990s.

I know of none that sustained "serious injury" as a result.

The removal of the DH, and then the SG from the US Open spelled the beginning of the end for snb. competition in the US. It's a shame because these were excellent events that sucked even the skiers off of the trails and assembled them along the course to watch.

What you seem to miss is the fact that having "both feet strapped to one board" reduces the risk of knee trauma, and higher speed events on hard surfaces allow for less blunt-force trauma, as DNF "sitters" simply slide, as opposed to have their forces stopped at the expense of bones and ligaments.

Snowboard DH was and is an exceptional sport.

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.

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We see skiers seriously hurt on those courses all the time. Snowboarders could only be worse with their limited ability to recover from error compared to skiers.

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.

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