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Downhill Snowboard Racing


utahcarver

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1 hour ago, Beckmann AG said:

There's something very much 'wrong' with Booker well prior to that crash. He's not 'right' with his skis, and for the speed he's going, looks way too tight. Like he buckled  his cuffs wrong, or someone sneaked a lift under his heels, to get him to the finish quicker.

Brooker, not Booker.  He is one of Canada's most decorated downhillers. I'm not about to critique a guy crashing at Kitzbühel, that's a monster of a course and one that Brooker has won at. 

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Ssorry for the typo. 

That wasn't a critique of Brooker, it was an observation regarding body language and how it can express a state of distress.   If you read a little closer, you might notice the observation relates to equipment, and how it may affect an athlete.

Someone might find that kind of thing useful at some point.

Obviously, he was adapting to the circumstance as well as possible, but that clearly didn''t work out so well.

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1 hour ago, Neil Gendzwill said:

I'm sure Alpine Canada's coaching staff scours this forum daily looking for gems of insight on 30 year old crashes. 

From the horse's mouth.

 

Of course not. They can call you directly for guidance.

The past often becomes he future, so there's enormous value in reviewing old footage of familiar venues.

There are at least a few on this forum with an interest in how things work, and why things go wrong, and there are some interesting lessons to take from Brooker's misfortune; not least of which is to pay attention when things go a little 'off' in training.

From your link ->"The year before my serious crash, I fell near that same spot. I went off the jump and I caught an edge. I then fell down in the compression area and I ended up on the other side of the course in the fence. But I didn’t give it another thought."

Like it or not, details matter.

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I’d say most of Todd’s distress comes from how courses were prepped back then. If you go back even farther, racers looked even more ragged, as their pitches were pretty much just flagged out on a totally haggard run. 

 If you took today’s racers, with all their training and dropped them into Todd’s place in that moment, they might be slightly less shit looking, but still probably look like shit. 

 FF to Korea, and the slope is groomed within an inch of its life, with aprons rivalling that if Dubai’s F1 track. If you made that course “turnier”, with more gates and lower speeds, it would probably be safe enough for SBDH. 

Or, you could just hold it for 6 people in a M of fresh. 

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From the article:

You couldn’t build a Kitzbuehel today. There are a lot of elements of the course that aren’t really legal anymore. If you were building a brand new course, it just wouldn’t work. At Kitzbuehel, they allow sections that are narrow and sections where you don’t see anything. You’re kind of blind, like you’re falling off into the abyss. These dangerous areas wouldn’t be allowed at other courses.

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1 hour ago, Rob Stevens said:

I’d say most of Todd’s distress comes from how courses were prepped back then. If you go back even farther, racers looked even more ragged, as their pitches were pretty much just flagged out on a totally haggard run. 

 If you took today’s racers, with all their training and dropped them into Todd’s place in that moment, they might be slightly less shit looking, but still probably look like shit. 

Not disagreeing with your first point, but having recently logged way too many hours on vintage DH footage, a lot of those racers flowed better over the snow, despite their low tech gear and boot-packed courses. 

As to your second, I'd disagree, to the extent that most on the WC seem to be more 'as one' with their gear, and would be less affected by surface irregularity. Similarly, If you purposely tweaked their gear, you could easily replicate Brooker's affect prior to crashing.

 

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5 hours ago, Beckmann AG said:

As to your second, I'd disagree, to the extent that most on the WC seem to be more 'as one' with their gear, and would be less affected by surface irregularity. Similarly, If you purposely tweaked their gear, you could easily replicate Brooker's affect prior to crashing.

 

Put their boots in the freezer and send them down the Hahnenkamm after a full weekend of tourists have had their way with it and it's been groomed with an '82 Thiokol.

O, the cries and lamentations.

 

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Okay, it's slalom, not DH but impressive nonetheless.  I shot this video at Steamboat during the NASTAR Nationals two years ago.  US Team Downhiller Jackie Wiles (now recovering from a nasty crash) and Justin Reiter.  Jackie is in a speedsuit and can skate and pole.  Justin wins by 0.01 and won again on the rematch when they switched courses.  Justin also beat former US Team racers Jake Fiala and AJ Kitt. The only skier to beat him (barely) was five-time Olympian Casey Puckett.

 

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13 hours ago, Rob Stevens said:

Put their boots in the freezer and send them down the Hahnenkamm after a full weekend of tourists have had their way with it and it's been groomed with an '82 Thiokol.

O, the cries and lamentations.

 

Expecially if they are on the run at the same time as the Thiokol

 

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  • 4 years later...

The resistance to having a 110kph snowboard downhill run is that in order to achieve stability at 110 to 120 mph, your appliances, skis or snowboards, need to be LONG.  It’s just basic physics.  Moreover, the bindings need to be releasable so that your legs are not torn off at the ankles when you crash.   I don’t want my ankles torn off.  The newton-meters of force when you crash at high speed is lethal.

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  • 2 weeks later...

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