Can carving survive without racing?

[Guest jschal01]

Zach,

The material science to make a shaped ski that arced but still had the lateral stiffness to hold an edge was the main limiting factor in bringing out the shaped design...they were in fact influenced by snowboard sidecuts, but I believe the Elan designers behind the SCX had racing an arced turn in mind when they designed it. Helidog were of course not racing-driven, and started I believe as a snowboard cut in half, but Millers had been around before them.

There has definitely been cross-polination both in terms of desing and technique between snowboarding and skiing, but I guess my points are 1) racing is what caused modern sidecuts to be adopted by the skiing industry (witness the SCX and then Bode Miller winning on the K2 Four), not snowboard-envy per se, 2) racing is a hugely constructive force behind both modern ski and modern snowboard technique, and 3) there is a certain inevitably to certain desing innovations, I think both modern skis and modern snowboards would have arisen, without the presence of the other, without too many differences.

In terms of growth areas, actually I believe more splitboarders are going to softboots or skis (for instance, Koch is now either in softboots or skiing a large part of the time). I do agree with you that AT boots offer significant benefits, but the market verdict seems to be that this may not be the best growth area from a commercial perspective.

Come to think of it, from a spectating viewpoint the people that get me fired up all place great emphasis on riding an arc, if not always an edge, and 80% of this can be said to stem from racing in some way. Jeremy Jones, Jeremy Nobis, in the case of Victoria Jealouse both a ski and snowboard racer before focusing on big mountains.

[astrokel]

Great article Neil...

Everything old is new, everything new is old, life is a circle...

ooooohhhhhhmmmmmm.....

One thing you can't avoid is that Twin tip skis definitely came from snowboarding... but this is a carving/hardboot forum so never mind... ;)

[Jack M]

"Ask yourself this question:

Where would skiing be if snowboards had never been invented?"

Skiing would be about where it is right now, maybe with the exception of rails.

LOL, no.

Shaped skis are a direct descendant of carving snowboards. Twin tip skis are a direct descendant of freestyle snowboards. Anyone who was in the ski industry around the time the new skis were developed will cop to this.

[Guest jschal01]

??? I think a skier is posing as a snowboarder.

I think this means me? :)

Nope, haven't been on skis except X-ctry since my first day on a snowboard, nothing against skiis, just don't have enough days. I do think it's too easy to try to claim everything though, and if you to a museuam with 19th century or earlier skis you'll see precedent for just about all of modern ski design, Bro Model, Spatula, you name it. Again, there has been cross-pollination, but my point is sort of a parallel evolution of design one, maybe shaped skis would have taken longer by a year or two without snowboards but the time was ripe, they would have come. Do snowboards owe everything to skiing because skis had metal edges first? Without skis, would snowboard designers have been too stupid to figure metal edges or camber out on their own?

Looking at my initial post to this thread my point on "where skis would be" may have been thread drift, for whcih I apologize (though not for my design opinions) but my last point was that for skiers, too, racing was a dominant force in helping technique and racing-derived technique was what turned head on gorrmed slopes.

As regards hardbooting and arguments that racing is the problem, I'd also make the point that a big problem with selling hardbooting is that a lot of the people doing it don't have good racing-derived technique. If the average rider in hardboots doesn't look all that athletic or comfortable, it's tough to sell.

[Jack M]

Do snowboards owe everything to skiing because skis had metal edges first? Without skis, would snowboard designers have been too stupid to figure metal edges or camber out on their own?

Snowboarders do owe a lot to ski design. Not everything, but a lot. Burton was shaping his snowboards with an uncarveable "V" shaped sidecut until 1989. I think Avalanche may have been first snowboard with a radial sidecut, and it was pulled directly off a ski.

Ski designers probably would have figured out the whole sidecut thing on their own eventually (like, many years later), but it is a known fact that the inspiration for shaped skis was that skiers were jealous of snowboarders' carves.

Now, whether they would have figured out the whole twin-tip, park, and pipe thing on their own is a different matter. I highly doubt it.

[Guest Tim Tuthill]

Jack: You are right on with the design change of skiis. No snowboards, no shaped skiis. Since I'm an old guy, I bought a bunch of boards that will last me till I'm down the road. If someone can come up with a pair of new Burton Fires or winds, 27.5 to 29 marked on the inner tung I'm on em!!! That should do it for me for the duration of my life on the mountain??? Is 10 boards enough???

[Bordy]

Tim You are about to step into the hardbooter.com world we have more boards then you will want to ride. Bring your ten but i'll make you ride 20 more!

Billy

[gdboytyler]

i have a pretty good idea the Griber never raced. Santanello may have.. I don't know. I can tell you for a fact that Koch never raced a day in his life.

Zach

If you're talking about John Griber, from Jackson Hole, Wy, then that guy did race. He was 2nd as an amatuer in the Nationals back around 1990.

I remember meeting John Griber and Chris Pappas at Jackson Hole during a college spring break snowboard trip.

[Guest darryl]

Why just take what we are given. I agree with Kent, the sport is almost dead. But we as “performance riders” should do what we can to breathe life into the racing. Look at sports cars, if these makers did not race, we would not have Porsche, and Lotus and such. Yes, we need racing to keep companies like Donek pushing the limits of the equipment. I live to carve, but again I agree with Kent, the choices stink. We need an arena that caters to our style and our niche. You all collectively have a lot of influence on the hills and with the management of the hills, work to arrange new aspects of the sport. You don’t have to race, just support the thing that started carving and the thing that will save it, racing.

[philfell]

"Klug rides a waist width of 210 and his shell size is a 28.0, I beleive. Zac Kay also rides boards over 200 mm wide. Personally I ride a board with a 19.5 waist width, my shell size is a 25.5 and I ride the physics which allows me to set-up my boots with a smaller sole lenght than normal.

If you don't know from real world experience, don't make statements based off of what you read from a manufactors website."

Well, last time I checked the equipment most riders where on F2s. Same specs as in the catalogue. And you can´t ignore the fact that sidecut´s are dictated by the shape of the courses more or less.

So you don´t find an "of the shelf" softish 21cm waist 180 board with 13 meter sidecut made by Völkl, F2, Nidecker or any other brand. That´s because it´s no good for GS!

Even if a world cup athlete has a board with the F2 logo on the base dosen't mean that it has the same specs as the catalog. Your examples of Volkl, F2 and Nidecker don't make a truely race worthy board that you can buy anymore. If the big manufactures kept up with current trends in raceing their boards would be wider.

Last year Fin had a Prior demo that was a 180 with a 13 meter radius, but I think the waist was a 20cm waist so not exactly to your specs, but you know what.... it would rule some PGS courses.

[philfell]

Mats here you go from the donek website, it's not exactly what you wanted, but close. It is a custum built PGS board for Nick Colavito:

Length Radius Width Flex Price

178 Colavito GS 178 13 20.00 7.8 600

[NateW]

"In the last five or six years racers have been going to wider and wider boards. Klug rides a waist width of 210 and his shell size is a 28.0, I beleive. Zac Kay also rides boards over 200 mm wide. Personally I ride a board with a 19.5 waist width, my shell size is a 25.5 and I ride the physics which allows me to set-up my boots with a smaller sole lenght than normal."

Yeah, but you can't *really* carve on anything less than 22cm.

(JOKE! JOKE! JUST KIDDING!)

"Ski designers probably would have figured out the whole sidecut thing on their own eventually (like, many years later), but it is a known fact that the inspiration for shaped skis was that skiers were jealous of snowboarders' carves."

I dunno, I was in junior high when someone explained sidecut to me, and I was like, "But there's hardly any! Why not way more?" I'll grant that a snowboard builder tried it first, but it had to happen. I'm surprised it took as long as it did.

Besides, if racing drives improvements so much, why did it take so damn long for skiers to catch on to deeper sidecuts? There's been way more ski races and ski racers for way longer than snowboarding. Kinda puts a hole in the theory that racing drives mass-market technology, unless somebody wants to posit that snowboarding does technology transfer better. Which I highly doubt, because:

"Your examples of Volkl, F2 and Nidecker don't make a truely race worthy board that you can buy anymore. If the big manufactures kept up with current trends in raceing their boards would be wider."

So, I continue to believe that carving doesn't need racing. It ain't helping much today, we'd do just fine without it.

"Look at sports cars, if these makers did not race, we would not have Porsche, and Lotus and such."

And for the 99% of us who drive on government roads in Mustangs and Miatas and Preludes and Corvettes and Eclipses and A4s, how much does it matter? I'll grant that the WRC did a lot to bring the Subaru WRX and Mitsubish Evo to market, but if organized racing ended tomorrow there would still be plenty of people willing to pony up (pardon the pun) for faster cars, and plenty of choices on the market, because the 99% of people who buy that stuff do not race. They just like driving high performance cars. That demand will always be there, whether or not there's organized races on TV or across town.

Random tangent time. True or false:

Four door sedans are to car racing what soft boots are to snowboard racing.

They ain't better, but they're what people buy, so the races are designed to make them more competitive.

[Guest stoked]

(you might want to skip this because I didn't read the whole thread yet gonna print it out but am at the internet cafe only now so here are my two cents)

although the competitive level provides important inputs for the development of equipment I feel rather sure that not competition but recreation is the foundation of hardboot snowboarding or any other sport for that matter

also recreational riding is in a way the foundation of the racing scene because it is a certain percentage of the recreational riders who become racers

as in (okay bad example) the best ski team in the world comes from a country in which skiing is the number one recreational sport and recreation is also the reason why those who moved on to competitions got into the sport in the first place

so the worries about the survival of the racing scene will be gone as soon as alpine snowboarding finds its freecarving roots again also in the public eye

same goes for business and more and better equipment since only if there are a lot of recreational riders watching races and (more important) buying equipment can companies afford to sponsor racers and to develop better products with their feedback

so I think racing cannot survive without freecarving and as for possibly attracting the masses I don't care

since there can be no doubt about that this would bring us more and better equipment (to be found next to a lot of ****ty equipment certainly)

as for spirit and vibe that has always been about what you create regardless of what the masses are up to

anyway I guess promoting freecarving is a good way to promote races too

[James Ong]

I think we have some control of our destiny. The way we conduct ourselves on the slopes and our willingness to talk the sport up and help the curious will eventually pay off. When i get asked about my board i find the easiest way to explain is that it's similar to race gear.

My feelings on racing are very ambivelent . As in any other sport, only a very small number of people are driven enough to devote the time, work and money to excel. Obviously there is a difference between what a racer is trying to accomplish compared to the typical recreational carver trying to lay it down ( or not :o ) The goals diverge but i don't think it matters overly much. One happy family right? .

Maybe for ses a clinic might be in order, just something to familiarize the masses with racing . maybe learn a few things in the process:biggthump

[philw]

If racing were to disappear altogether, would the remaining alpine providers survive ? Does recreational carving by itself provide enough customers ? If deeluxe and head were to stop producing boots, would we be up sh-t creek? I would hate to make do with ski boots.

On the first point, I don't know. I like to use race-inspired gear for cycling, windsurfing, all those sports. It would be odd to have a sport which was totally fashion-driven: I hope that doesn't happen to snowboarding, but it might.

As far as using ski boots, worse things have happened. That's all we had back in the day (here in Yoop), so I'll still be carving circles around the children.

I don't know how this sort of thing works, market-wise. Perhaps it's like bikes. I live in one of the flatter parts of the world, but mostly the bike shops sell "mountain" bikes. It's a fashion thing, although the people who ride those mushy clunkers suffer from it every day. People still race bikes on the road (some of 'em are even Americans), so I can still buy good bike gear. I hope the same thing will happen with boards.

[Mats]

Mats here you go from the donek website, it's not exactly what you wanted, but close. It is a custum built PGS board for Nick Colavito:

Length Radius Width Flex Price

178 Colavito GS 178 13 20.00 7.8 600

It´s a custom from a boutique brand for gods sake! Last year you couldn´t even find a f#.ing carveboard in Aspen except for a couple of ten year old Rossis. And if you take in consideration that you have the biggest session in the world in the same town it says a whole lot about the status of hardbooting as a recreational sport. Without Donek, Coiler, Pogo, Prior and some other small brands it would be catastropic boardwise. But don´t call a custom "of the shelf".

If you go into a snowboardshop anywhere in the world and you wanna order a carvingboard they gonna check F2 or any other majors website/cataloque. On Burton they find none! So whats left? Slalom and GS boards. Sorry! And I alreaday have my fantasyboard - my trusty Afterburner splittail made by Chris Prior. 100% custom.

Peace

[Gecko]

If you go into a snowboardshop anywhere in the world and you wanna order a carvingboard they gonna check F2 or any other majors website/cataloque. On Burton they find none! So whats left? Slalom and GS boards. Sorry! And I alreaday have my fantasyboard - my trusty Afterburner splittail made by Chris Prior. 100% custom.

Peace

I'll argue that...at least here in Japan every resort board shop that I've been to has had at least one carving board and rarely has it been a F2 though Burton's (R17 Addicted) are popular but then there are host of other local made boards. As for boardshops not at the resort one out of 6 has some sort of carving equipment...Grey, Ogasaka, BC Stream, Moss to name a few...most of these boards are not race oriented. But then Japan is one of those countries that is more carving friendly. Not only that but they seem to be doing Boot R&D as well so there is hope, though they look expensive. Fast style bindings are more popular than Intec for stepins with at least two Japanese makers though both look almost (but not quite) identical

[Mats]

Japan is the place to be... Saw your Japanese carvingmag at Fins party. Wow! Is there a new issue out?

[Linus]

I've just got curious.....What's the current ratio of Softies vs. Hardbooters? Worldwise, America(North and South), Europe, Asia. Last time I heard it was more like 95:5 in America. :o

[Neil Gendzwill]

I've just got curious.....What's the current ratio of Softies vs. Hardbooters? Worldwise, America(North and South), Europe, Asia. Last time I heard it was more like 95:5 in America. :o

If I had to guess based on my experiences in Canadian resorts, it's 1000:1.

[Gecko]

Japan is the place to be... Saw your Japanese carvingmag at Fins party. Wow! Is there a new issue out?

I have been scouring bookstores looking for it...the first of the snowboard mags are just starting to come out.

Something else to think about in comparison to motorcycles our carving boards are Race Replicas. You aren't gonna win and worldcups on an FC/RC/Axis, nor are you gonna win a GP on a GSXR 600...the paralells are way too numerous.

[Neuffy]

Hm...Canadian resorts. Well, at Lake Louise last winter, we generally had just me everyday. Due to occasional Japanese tourists, europeans, etc, I'd guess it's between 500:1 and 1000:1 Average daily number of carvers is probably about 3 (and would've been 2 if I hadn't been there every day).

Except that one day when we had 24 Japanese carvers come...that was a nice day.

[Neil Gendzwill]

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. A crowded Saturday at Louise is what, 6000 people? The only guy I ever see on plates there is me. Sometimes I might see one other guy. Assume 1/3 of the crowd are riders, that's 1 or 2 carvers in 2000.

[Neuffy]

Yeah, but you have to take into account that there are actually more carvers on weekdays than weekends. I met a couple carvers that just didn't bother on weekends, and one guy who had a pass but just never brought his alpine gear on the weekends.

[Guest]

I will occasionally see others in hardboots, but very rarely, and usually only at buttermilk, which I very rarely go to. But Aspen doens't have the same number of people other large resorts have, so I'm guessing it's 2000:1 here, including all four mountiains.