P.opsicle
Member
PARK CITY, Utah
As skiers and snowboarders pause at the entrance of a 500-foot shaft of
snow and ice, known more colloquially as the Park City Mountain Resort
Halfpipe, it is typically to readjust their minds as much as their
bindings.
And, yet, as they take a deep breath to gather courage and
concentration, few take notice of the metal sign mounted on a post just
to their right, even though it beseeches passersby with bold letters.
A warning sign at the top of the halfpipe run on which Sarah Burke was killed in January.
Billy Witz
STOP READ THIS.
Most signs on the ski resort’s slopes are simple: blue squares, green
circles and black diamonds, indicating with arrows which direction to
take for routes of varying degrees of difficulty. The signs are so plain
and so visible they barely require anyone to slow down, let alone stop,
on their way down the mountain.
But this one reads like a liability waiver, laying out a long set of
expectations and recommendations before warning that plunging into the
halfpipe “exposes you to the risk of serious injury or death. Inverted
aerials are not recommended.”
YOU ASSUME THE RISK.
At any other halfpipe, especially ones that do not have 22-foot-high
walls, at least 4 feet higher than most in the United States, it would
be easier to roll your eyes at this type of lawyerly, cover-your-butt
language. Not here. Not anymore.
Last month, Sarah Burke, a talented, trailblazing freestyle skier, died
after falling during a practice run and slamming her head against the
frozen wall of this halfpipe. Her death comes two years after an elite
snowboarder, Kevin Pearce, suffered a serious brain trauma after a
headfirst fall on the same course. Pearce spent four months in
hospitals, has undergone eye surgeries to recover his sight and
equilibrium and recently got back on a snowboard for the first time,
though his competitive career is over.
These accidents might have rocked the tight-knit community of
freeskiers and snowboarders, whose epicenter lies here. But they do not
seem to have sparked any introspection, let alone any calls to examine
whether this sport, whose essence is about freedom of expression and
blasting through boundaries, has become too dangerous.
Whereas the death of a luge racer on the eve of the Vancouver Olympics
led to changes in the track, speed restrictions for the 2014 Games and
much hand-wringing by those in the sport, nothing of the sort has
happened here.
Sarah Burke: 1982-2012
We look back at the life and career of a winter sports star.
Despite the accidents, it’s hard to find anyone calling for change.
“These accidents that have happened are unfortunate and terrible,” said
Devin Logan, a freeskier who won a slopestyle silver medal last month
at the Winter X Games at age 18. “But they’re accidents. It’s as safe as
it can be. It’s an extreme sport.”
These are not the callous words of the clueless or the detached. They
come from someone who grew up idolizing Burke, as much for the way she
pushed her way into what had been a men’s domain — she is widely
credited with getting superpipe skiing added to the Olympic program for
2014 — as for how her graceful acrobatics showed little girls what was
possible on skis.
The crossover appeal of snowboarder Shaun White notwithstanding, the
world of freeskiing and snowboarding is a cloistered one. In this
circle, Burke was an iconic figure. Photogenic, charming and a pioneer, a
much broader audience learned of Burke in the aftermath of her
accident.
Just days after her death, a candlelight night ski down a mountain in
Aspen, Colo., was part of ESPN’s programming on the X Games. It served
as a solemn, poignant counterpoint to the rest of the adrenaline-fueled,
energy drink-guzzling, can-you-top-this ethos of the event. Many of the
competitors honored Burke by wearing stickers inscribed: I Ski For
Sarah.
It was an idea borrowed from the Vancouver Olympics, when snowboarders
took a pledge, “I Ride For Kevin,” as Pearce lay in a hospital, his
recovery still touch and go. That rallying cry was given a new, upbeat
twist in December, when Pearce got back on his board for the first time
and cruised down a slope in Breckenridge, Colo., accompanied by dozens
of others who wore T-shirts inscribed: Ride With Kevin.
These events were a rare show of solidarity in a sport that is defined
by — and celebrates — the individual. Even at the highest level, where
there are sponsors, coaches, competitors, organizers and fans, it is
about man vs. mountain — and himself.
“In skiing, it’s all individual,” said Tyler Battersby, a development
coach for the Park City Ski Team whose sister, Ashley, is a competitive
skier and whose mother would often host Burke when she trained in Salt
Lake City. “The only interference you have is the weather. It’s a very
concentrated sport. It’s not like soccer, baseball, basketball — you
don’t have to worry about who’s running where when you can’t see all
around you. In skiing and snowboarding, it’s only you. That sets the
mind-set for athletes — it’s just me and this jump, me and this mogul.
That kind of alleviates stress: Anything you do, it’s all on you. There
are no limits. Everyone picks their own limits — what are your goals and
do you want to exceed them?”
Sarah Burke, just 29 years old when she died, was a pioneering figure in women's superpipe skiing.
Doug Pensinger
That notion, in concept or in the concrete, can be awfully empowering.
Sure, it can be co-opted and trivialized by an ad campaign, but it is
hard to feel anything but unadulterated awe standing at the bottom of
the halfpipe and watching a snowboarder named Scotty Pike launch himself
above the rim, contorting his body into unimaginable twists and flips
about 25 feet in the air and landing gracefully — that is, on his feet —
before riding up the other side and doing it all again.
When he nonchalantly pulled up at the bottom, Pike said there is a
thrill that comes with being able to fly ever-so-briefly and that he
works on these maneuvers on trampolines and in foam pits “so it doesn’t
seem scary.”
Sometimes, though, it is. He has broken his collarbone, twisted knees
and wrenched ankles. But sometimes you just have to, you know, go for
it.
“When my friends do tricks, I have to go with them,” Pike said. “You don’t want to be a pansy.”
The pressure to invent new tricks — or at least mimic them — comes not
just from peers, from judges or from within. There is also the pressure,
implied or explicit, that accompanies sponsorship. If a company invests
in a skier or snowboarder, the athlete is expected to pay it back by
pushing the sport — and the envelope — further.
“Is it the athletes that want (tricks) to get this big or is it the
sponsors?” asked Lance Viola from behind the counter at Bazooka’s Free
Ride Shop, a ski and snowboard store at Park City. “The days of 'take
this sticker and put it on your board' — it’s not like that anymore.
It’s, 'We’ll fly you to Canada and you better do good.' ”
For the elite, like snowboarding champ White, that means being
fortunate enough that before the Vancouver Olympics, his sponsor, Red
Bull, built a private halfpipe in the Colorado backwoods that was
equipped with a 400-square foot pit filled with foam cubes. This allowed
him to perfect the then-cutting edge “double cork,” a pair of diagonal
flips, with a safety net.
It is the same maneuver Pearce was trying to refine when he was
injured. A year earlier, he broke his ankle trying the double cork.
COME HERE
London is getting prepared with these venues for the Olympic Games.
“I felt like I really didn’t have a choice,” Pearce told Outside
Magazine last year. “I knew that if I wanted to win, I needed to land
it.”
If Pearce’s fears or desires were not going to stop him, then who could? Or, more appropriately, who should?
As sports are being played harder and faster, there has been an
increased spotlight on safety. The NFL, after dragging its heels, has
instituted changes in its rules, administration and equipment to help
reduce head injuries, though it is fair to ask whether enough has been
done. Hockey is now beginning to address similar issues after the deaths
last summer of several former enforcers and the possibility its biggest
star, Sidney Crosby, might be forced into premature retirement because
of head injuries. In the wake of Dale Earnhardt’s death more than a
decade ago, NASCAR chassis have been redesigned to better protect
stock-car drivers.
Farther out of the mainstream, the Canadian bobsled team withdrew in
protest last month from a World Cup competition in Germany because the
international federation failed to make changes to the course that would
have made it safer after the Canadians crashed twice.
All of these changes have had catalysts: Players unions, governing
bodies, media and an outraged public have all been agents of change.
In freeskiing and snowboarding, with its emphasis on individualism and
its benefactors emphasizing its extreme nature, who has an interest in
being a voice of caution?
“It’s an interesting ethical question,” said Dr. Colby Hansen, of the
University of Utah’s Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Department.
“When people are on their own, you lose some of that oversight. To what
level is it appropriate to intervene and not allow people to do things
that they want to do by their own choice?”
Hansen says his department’s concussion program sees five to 10 new
patients a week, and up to 20 percent were injured in snowsports. Hansen
said preliminary data collected over the past five years by a
colleague, Dr. Stuart Willick, shows that skiers and snowboarders are
twice as likely to incur a brain injury in the terrain park, where the
halfpipe and other jumps and rails are located, as they are on other
parts of the slope.
Willick declined to confirm those figures but said he is examining
injury patterns of skiers vs. snowboarders, younger vs. older, and
experienced vs. inexperienced. The goal, he said, is to make skiing and
snowboarding safer. To that end, he believes resorts have designed safer
courses and manufacturers have improved safety features.
Kevin Pearce, seen here in Sept. 2009, was critically injured on the
same halfpipe in Dec. 2010. He recovered but never competed again.
Guy Rhodes
But Willick lamented not having NFL-type funding, adding, “it’s not on anyone’s radar right now.”
A blanket of fresh powder that had been dumped the night before gave
way to stunningly beautiful conditions on a recent day in Park City:
nothing but blue skies and sunshine on a crisp, windless 25-degree day.
A steady line of skiers and snowboarders hopped off the chairlift and
wasted little time before dropping into the park to skid atop railings,
go flying off ramps or leap into the halfpipe. Some carry video cameras
to film friends, others have them affixed to their helmets, one of which
bears the message: "Live Free or Die," a paean either to New Hampshire
or the rush that comes with the sport.
Nevertheless, it was a reminder of how much interpretation is at the heart of the sport, no matter your level.
“It’s like what an artist does with a paint brush, they do with their
body,” said Nick Cummings, who was stationed at the bottom of the
halfpipe, critiquing the skiers he coaches at Westminster College of
Salt Lake City. “Everybody has their own style.”
While there might be distinctive flair in the way people ride and in
the way they dress, when it comes to whether there were any lessons to
be learned by Burke’s death and Pearce’s life-altering crash, they were
of a single thought: Don’t change a thing.
In interviews with more than a dozen people, the reasons were manifold:
• Pearce and Burke wore helmets, which was a sign they were not being
reckless. (There was little consideration given to the idea that helmets
might be manufactured to provide more protection.)
• Burke landed on her feet, then lost her balance and hit her head,
severing an artery. Thus, her accident was described as somewhat of a
fluke.
• More people are killed in avalanches, often a result of unnecessary risk taking, but that is rarely reported upon.
• The halfpipe at Park City Mountain Resort is carefully calibrated and
diligently monitored, making it much safer than others around the
country.
But the bottom line seemed to be this:
“I don’t want to have contests dumbed down,” said Sean Kaldhusdal, who
works at Powder Huffer, a popular freeski accessory store, when he isn’t
on the slopes. “You can’t put a trapeze net on the side of the
halfpipe. It’s an extreme sport for a reason. There are extreme
consequences.”
Later, it was not hard to think about this conversation while watching
some skiers and snowboarders fly off ramps and over the edge of the
halfpipe, artfully contorting their bodies and spinning upside down two
stories above a surface that felt as dense as cement.
Somewhere, logic suggests, there has to be another Kevin Pearce or
Sarah Burke out there. It’s one thing to defy gravity, another to defy
the odds.
Link To Article:http://msn.foxsports.com/olympics/s...aves-hard-questions-for-extreme-sports-020812
Absolutely Disgusting, Makes me sick to my stomach to read. Billy witz has no place in skiing.
*SB'd did not find anything, if it's a repost let it die. My apologies.
*Saw this on ahmets FB,
As skiers and snowboarders pause at the entrance of a 500-foot shaft of
snow and ice, known more colloquially as the Park City Mountain Resort
Halfpipe, it is typically to readjust their minds as much as their
bindings.
And, yet, as they take a deep breath to gather courage and
concentration, few take notice of the metal sign mounted on a post just
to their right, even though it beseeches passersby with bold letters.
A warning sign at the top of the halfpipe run on which Sarah Burke was killed in January.
Billy Witz
STOP READ THIS.
Most signs on the ski resort’s slopes are simple: blue squares, green
circles and black diamonds, indicating with arrows which direction to
take for routes of varying degrees of difficulty. The signs are so plain
and so visible they barely require anyone to slow down, let alone stop,
on their way down the mountain.
But this one reads like a liability waiver, laying out a long set of
expectations and recommendations before warning that plunging into the
halfpipe “exposes you to the risk of serious injury or death. Inverted
aerials are not recommended.”
YOU ASSUME THE RISK.
At any other halfpipe, especially ones that do not have 22-foot-high
walls, at least 4 feet higher than most in the United States, it would
be easier to roll your eyes at this type of lawyerly, cover-your-butt
language. Not here. Not anymore.
Last month, Sarah Burke, a talented, trailblazing freestyle skier, died
after falling during a practice run and slamming her head against the
frozen wall of this halfpipe. Her death comes two years after an elite
snowboarder, Kevin Pearce, suffered a serious brain trauma after a
headfirst fall on the same course. Pearce spent four months in
hospitals, has undergone eye surgeries to recover his sight and
equilibrium and recently got back on a snowboard for the first time,
though his competitive career is over.
These accidents might have rocked the tight-knit community of
freeskiers and snowboarders, whose epicenter lies here. But they do not
seem to have sparked any introspection, let alone any calls to examine
whether this sport, whose essence is about freedom of expression and
blasting through boundaries, has become too dangerous.
Whereas the death of a luge racer on the eve of the Vancouver Olympics
led to changes in the track, speed restrictions for the 2014 Games and
much hand-wringing by those in the sport, nothing of the sort has
happened here.
Sarah Burke: 1982-2012
We look back at the life and career of a winter sports star.
Despite the accidents, it’s hard to find anyone calling for change.
“These accidents that have happened are unfortunate and terrible,” said
Devin Logan, a freeskier who won a slopestyle silver medal last month
at the Winter X Games at age 18. “But they’re accidents. It’s as safe as
it can be. It’s an extreme sport.”
These are not the callous words of the clueless or the detached. They
come from someone who grew up idolizing Burke, as much for the way she
pushed her way into what had been a men’s domain — she is widely
credited with getting superpipe skiing added to the Olympic program for
2014 — as for how her graceful acrobatics showed little girls what was
possible on skis.
The crossover appeal of snowboarder Shaun White notwithstanding, the
world of freeskiing and snowboarding is a cloistered one. In this
circle, Burke was an iconic figure. Photogenic, charming and a pioneer, a
much broader audience learned of Burke in the aftermath of her
accident.
Just days after her death, a candlelight night ski down a mountain in
Aspen, Colo., was part of ESPN’s programming on the X Games. It served
as a solemn, poignant counterpoint to the rest of the adrenaline-fueled,
energy drink-guzzling, can-you-top-this ethos of the event. Many of the
competitors honored Burke by wearing stickers inscribed: I Ski For
Sarah.
It was an idea borrowed from the Vancouver Olympics, when snowboarders
took a pledge, “I Ride For Kevin,” as Pearce lay in a hospital, his
recovery still touch and go. That rallying cry was given a new, upbeat
twist in December, when Pearce got back on his board for the first time
and cruised down a slope in Breckenridge, Colo., accompanied by dozens
of others who wore T-shirts inscribed: Ride With Kevin.
These events were a rare show of solidarity in a sport that is defined
by — and celebrates — the individual. Even at the highest level, where
there are sponsors, coaches, competitors, organizers and fans, it is
about man vs. mountain — and himself.
“In skiing, it’s all individual,” said Tyler Battersby, a development
coach for the Park City Ski Team whose sister, Ashley, is a competitive
skier and whose mother would often host Burke when she trained in Salt
Lake City. “The only interference you have is the weather. It’s a very
concentrated sport. It’s not like soccer, baseball, basketball — you
don’t have to worry about who’s running where when you can’t see all
around you. In skiing and snowboarding, it’s only you. That sets the
mind-set for athletes — it’s just me and this jump, me and this mogul.
That kind of alleviates stress: Anything you do, it’s all on you. There
are no limits. Everyone picks their own limits — what are your goals and
do you want to exceed them?”
Sarah Burke, just 29 years old when she died, was a pioneering figure in women's superpipe skiing.
Doug Pensinger
That notion, in concept or in the concrete, can be awfully empowering.
Sure, it can be co-opted and trivialized by an ad campaign, but it is
hard to feel anything but unadulterated awe standing at the bottom of
the halfpipe and watching a snowboarder named Scotty Pike launch himself
above the rim, contorting his body into unimaginable twists and flips
about 25 feet in the air and landing gracefully — that is, on his feet —
before riding up the other side and doing it all again.
When he nonchalantly pulled up at the bottom, Pike said there is a
thrill that comes with being able to fly ever-so-briefly and that he
works on these maneuvers on trampolines and in foam pits “so it doesn’t
seem scary.”
Sometimes, though, it is. He has broken his collarbone, twisted knees
and wrenched ankles. But sometimes you just have to, you know, go for
it.
“When my friends do tricks, I have to go with them,” Pike said. “You don’t want to be a pansy.”
The pressure to invent new tricks — or at least mimic them — comes not
just from peers, from judges or from within. There is also the pressure,
implied or explicit, that accompanies sponsorship. If a company invests
in a skier or snowboarder, the athlete is expected to pay it back by
pushing the sport — and the envelope — further.
“Is it the athletes that want (tricks) to get this big or is it the
sponsors?” asked Lance Viola from behind the counter at Bazooka’s Free
Ride Shop, a ski and snowboard store at Park City. “The days of 'take
this sticker and put it on your board' — it’s not like that anymore.
It’s, 'We’ll fly you to Canada and you better do good.' ”
For the elite, like snowboarding champ White, that means being
fortunate enough that before the Vancouver Olympics, his sponsor, Red
Bull, built a private halfpipe in the Colorado backwoods that was
equipped with a 400-square foot pit filled with foam cubes. This allowed
him to perfect the then-cutting edge “double cork,” a pair of diagonal
flips, with a safety net.
It is the same maneuver Pearce was trying to refine when he was
injured. A year earlier, he broke his ankle trying the double cork.
COME HERE
London is getting prepared with these venues for the Olympic Games.
“I felt like I really didn’t have a choice,” Pearce told Outside
Magazine last year. “I knew that if I wanted to win, I needed to land
it.”
If Pearce’s fears or desires were not going to stop him, then who could? Or, more appropriately, who should?
As sports are being played harder and faster, there has been an
increased spotlight on safety. The NFL, after dragging its heels, has
instituted changes in its rules, administration and equipment to help
reduce head injuries, though it is fair to ask whether enough has been
done. Hockey is now beginning to address similar issues after the deaths
last summer of several former enforcers and the possibility its biggest
star, Sidney Crosby, might be forced into premature retirement because
of head injuries. In the wake of Dale Earnhardt’s death more than a
decade ago, NASCAR chassis have been redesigned to better protect
stock-car drivers.
Farther out of the mainstream, the Canadian bobsled team withdrew in
protest last month from a World Cup competition in Germany because the
international federation failed to make changes to the course that would
have made it safer after the Canadians crashed twice.
All of these changes have had catalysts: Players unions, governing
bodies, media and an outraged public have all been agents of change.
In freeskiing and snowboarding, with its emphasis on individualism and
its benefactors emphasizing its extreme nature, who has an interest in
being a voice of caution?
“It’s an interesting ethical question,” said Dr. Colby Hansen, of the
University of Utah’s Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Department.
“When people are on their own, you lose some of that oversight. To what
level is it appropriate to intervene and not allow people to do things
that they want to do by their own choice?”
Hansen says his department’s concussion program sees five to 10 new
patients a week, and up to 20 percent were injured in snowsports. Hansen
said preliminary data collected over the past five years by a
colleague, Dr. Stuart Willick, shows that skiers and snowboarders are
twice as likely to incur a brain injury in the terrain park, where the
halfpipe and other jumps and rails are located, as they are on other
parts of the slope.
Willick declined to confirm those figures but said he is examining
injury patterns of skiers vs. snowboarders, younger vs. older, and
experienced vs. inexperienced. The goal, he said, is to make skiing and
snowboarding safer. To that end, he believes resorts have designed safer
courses and manufacturers have improved safety features.
Kevin Pearce, seen here in Sept. 2009, was critically injured on the
same halfpipe in Dec. 2010. He recovered but never competed again.
Guy Rhodes
But Willick lamented not having NFL-type funding, adding, “it’s not on anyone’s radar right now.”
A blanket of fresh powder that had been dumped the night before gave
way to stunningly beautiful conditions on a recent day in Park City:
nothing but blue skies and sunshine on a crisp, windless 25-degree day.
A steady line of skiers and snowboarders hopped off the chairlift and
wasted little time before dropping into the park to skid atop railings,
go flying off ramps or leap into the halfpipe. Some carry video cameras
to film friends, others have them affixed to their helmets, one of which
bears the message: "Live Free or Die," a paean either to New Hampshire
or the rush that comes with the sport.
Nevertheless, it was a reminder of how much interpretation is at the heart of the sport, no matter your level.
“It’s like what an artist does with a paint brush, they do with their
body,” said Nick Cummings, who was stationed at the bottom of the
halfpipe, critiquing the skiers he coaches at Westminster College of
Salt Lake City. “Everybody has their own style.”
While there might be distinctive flair in the way people ride and in
the way they dress, when it comes to whether there were any lessons to
be learned by Burke’s death and Pearce’s life-altering crash, they were
of a single thought: Don’t change a thing.
In interviews with more than a dozen people, the reasons were manifold:
• Pearce and Burke wore helmets, which was a sign they were not being
reckless. (There was little consideration given to the idea that helmets
might be manufactured to provide more protection.)
• Burke landed on her feet, then lost her balance and hit her head,
severing an artery. Thus, her accident was described as somewhat of a
fluke.
• More people are killed in avalanches, often a result of unnecessary risk taking, but that is rarely reported upon.
• The halfpipe at Park City Mountain Resort is carefully calibrated and
diligently monitored, making it much safer than others around the
country.
But the bottom line seemed to be this:
“I don’t want to have contests dumbed down,” said Sean Kaldhusdal, who
works at Powder Huffer, a popular freeski accessory store, when he isn’t
on the slopes. “You can’t put a trapeze net on the side of the
halfpipe. It’s an extreme sport for a reason. There are extreme
consequences.”
Later, it was not hard to think about this conversation while watching
some skiers and snowboarders fly off ramps and over the edge of the
halfpipe, artfully contorting their bodies and spinning upside down two
stories above a surface that felt as dense as cement.
Somewhere, logic suggests, there has to be another Kevin Pearce or
Sarah Burke out there. It’s one thing to defy gravity, another to defy
the odds.
Link To Article:http://msn.foxsports.com/olympics/s...aves-hard-questions-for-extreme-sports-020812
Absolutely Disgusting, Makes me sick to my stomach to read. Billy witz has no place in skiing.
*SB'd did not find anything, if it's a repost let it die. My apologies.
*Saw this on ahmets FB,
