Comp skiers vs good skiers

duhamelski

duhamelski

Active member
so ive been thinking about what makes tanner so successful in competitions when there are skiers out their who clearly do better stuff in movies. so ive decided that their are two types of skiers, comp skiers and skiers just trying to get as good as possible for the love of skiing. like a comp skier is a whole new breed. they have to promote themselves at any opportunity possible, and they have to train specifically for the next comp. skiers like tanner and simon are like this. they are never hitting the 300 foot jumps or anything, but they are always consistant on average features. they are not really "crazy" or anyhting. however, skiers like mike wilson and candide are just trying to get as good as possible. although candide won the x games a while back, he really hasnt shown much at competition since. mike wilson was kinda impressive at us open, but has never really been at the top of the competition. these two also arent really promoted for any reason other than how good they are. like you dont see candide looking all gangster wearing a quicksilver jacket flashing a gang sign in freeskier, but you might see a picture of him 80 feet in the air. therefore, there are two different breeds of skier. thoughts?
 
in elaboration, i'd like to point out that maybe said "comp" skiers arent completely focused on competition

tanner's switch nine on chads is a testament to the fact he still remains one of the inovators, like him or not

and simon, is still rocking. innovation isnt technically the creation of new tricks, simon has been expanding the style factor for shure his truckdrivers are looking rediculous these days

i do totally understand where you're coming from john its just that categorizing is a hopeless endeavor it's just something that people tend to take too seriously and being that everyone is unique categories fail to acurately portray people
 
There's good skiers and there's good consistent skiers. Watch any ski movie from the last few years and notice that Tanner never falls (except for when he breaks his ankles). That's why he can win in a comp.
 
Taner's switch 9 over chads was not inovation, peopple had already been doing switch 9's in the backcountry and hitting chads. just doing the bigest switch 9 in the back country does not qulifiy as inovative. however the first people do backcounty jumps were inovative, the first to land switch in the backcountry were inovative, the first to start spining in a big mountain line were inovative, watch Andy Mahre, Eric Pollard, Mike Douglas, and Charles Gagnier they are all doing stuff that has not really been done before. Just going bigger weather or not it is spining jump size or rail size, is not being inovative. To be inovative you have to be doing something new. Very few pro skiers are actualy inovative, the rest are just really good on picking up on something. Also when you start doing inovative things some people are not going to like it. Take base jumping for example, it is extreamly inovative. However not every one loved it, many people hated it infact saud it was retarted.
 
i was speaking in terms of nobody having ever hit chad's switch

innovation consists of many factors theres a difference between invention and innovation
 
i agree with whats been said, i also think that competition skiers are about the current trends in skiing more than innovation. take for example the truckdriver of last season, the winners were the ones with the best, like simon, and they work really hard on what's "in", ya know. and thats not to say simon dumont is fake or anything, becuase his pipe tricks are amazing, comp skiers and soul skiers just have different motives
 
i hope that you are not saying that mike wilson is more tallented that tanner hall because that just isnt the case. sure maybe he is hucking double flips but who really cares? shit doesnt look good at all. tanner has so much steeze in all the tricks that he does. and now people will tell me to get off his nuts but its the truth.

and the switch nine over chads was the most progressive trick of last year. how can you argue against that. no one has ever hit chads gap switch and that is the most infamous gap in skiing history. he was the first person to hit it switch and thats not innovative or progressive? show me another gap as big as that one with someone hitting it switch
 
its not that either type of skier is better, its just that there are two breeds. ya tanner hit chads switch, which is innovative, but overall that hasn't been his focus. simon is kinda a polar opposite. and im not trying to turn this into a "bash tanner" or "bash wilson" thread, but whatever
 
hey! how bout this!!!

tanner wins comps cause hes a good skier!

simon dumont does crazy tricks cause hes a good skier!

jon olsson is smooth as ever cause hes a good skier!

mike wilson does double flips cause hes a good skier!

candide hits crazy features cause hes a good skier!

competitors in competitions are all good skiers!

skiers in pro ski vids are all good skiers!

there all talented in there own ways and that is why they have great segs in movies and win comps unlike us who are stuck on ns to argue about how one skier is better then the other..!

yay!

 
in my opinion, most of the PRO's out there are around the same point, they all have their strong points, and all have their week points, but the fact of the matter is, like the title of the thread, is that some people just love being in competition, having that pressure put on them to do the best they can, and most of the time push themselves to new limits, example being candide in the x-games a few years back, jon in his invitational with the kangaroo flip, tanner being at the top for a looooong ass time. Then there are the other people who push themselves with their friends help, and by themselves, they innovate without the need for competition. Some of them dont even like competition, some of them choke at the pressure, etc...... all i am trying to say is that some people strive to be in comps and win, and other people strive to have the best segment in next years films.

Both of them are in my opinion a good thing, because there are people out there competing and then there are dope ass movie segments, and both of them is what makes our sport what it is.
 
hahahah, yea people have been doing switch 9's over chad's for years...fuck thats like the first trick I would do If I was there. rightt...lol Tanner is a cool muffugger.

Competeting hardcore is a mindset. Thats all it is. Some pros just dont like the stress of competing and I understand that.
 
just becuase no one had hit "chads" switch does not make it inovative, earlier that year andy sage and pep had all hit piramids switch,just doing something bigger is not really being inovative, it is just steping up the same thing, saying taners switch 9 over chads is inovative is saying that doing a triple back off of a 700 ft clife durring a base jump is inovative becuase the most anyone has done is a double back flip off of a 500 foot clif. Now I am not saying that Tanner is a bad skier, far from it i think he is one of the best skiers out there interms of talent, skill and dedication. But you do not see him doing stuff that no one has done before let alone thought of before.
 
it's boiling down to personal opinion now, my opinion is that innovation is the introduction of something no one has seen before no one had seen a switch nine over chads before

i get where you're coming from, i really do its just that youre disregarding the significantness (probly not a real word) of that specific hit
 
ok so who else hit chads switch? like the person above me said there is a difference between innovation and invention. just because he didnt make up an entire new trick doesnt mean that he isnt innovative
 
Win, inovation is the act of inventing, same root, same idea. what do you think inovation is? and do you agree that doing more backflips off of a bigger clif during a base jump is just as inovative as Taner's switch 9 over chads.
 
like i said i get what youre saying we're having a very minor conflict our opinions are very close, just mine is a little more broad
 
wow who cares these threads are so pointless why bother classifying skiers any farther then big mountain, park or race
 
hitting a new jump does not make it inovative, like i said Pep, Andy and sage all hit perimids earlier that year and they are very simmilar only chads is bigger. it was not really new, every one was thinking about it and it really was just coming down to who did it first, jon would have done it to (did he?) and I am sure if TJ schiller was in town he would have done it. See it was not something unique to tanner, With andy's zero over piramids taht same year that was 100% him, almost no one else would have done it in his place, not becuase of lack of skill but becuse that was just not the direction that the skiing comunity was directed as a whole. Taner was just doing what almost every one in the skiing comunity would do if they had his skill level. See what I am trying to say?
 
it is fun to argue about stuff like this, now Win and I were having a great friendly little argument right here untill you came in.

and no one is hating on Taner,

And John just watch me ski that should answer your question.
 
did i meet you somewhere? like at high north or somethin i just thought it a lil weird you called me by my first name
 
You're such a moron. People who have switch 9ed chad's gap: tanner. that is all.

why do people look to constantly bring down tanner? what more do you want?
 
do pollard and seth ski park as much as tanner??

didnt think so,..

some ppl just find it sweet to get free shit,

who wouldent go throw down in comps if they knew they would get shit from it, not only get a free trip there,..

some are freeriders some are newschoolers, same shit different pile.

who cares? its skiing and its stil the dopest shit ever,.

just cuz ppl wanna go throw down in a comp compared to haveing a huge DOPE section in a vid.. does it make them a bad person?! no..

like shaun white, yea hes becoming such a sell out,.. but u cant blame him really, hes good, he going to the olympics and shit happeneds,.. do u expect him to turn down all the shit ppl offer?

if it happened to you would u be like... no thanks dude, i dont want free shit for life
 
Dont hate on skiers who enter comps....I dont know if you fuckin noticed but theres a prize pool of CASH in comps, and the opportunity to showcase yourself so that more sponsors can see you doing your thing. Dont you think its possible that theyre doing what it is theyre doing so that they can earn money SO THAT THEY CAN CONTINUE to do what they love doing!?! Not everybody can be a fuckin "SOUL SKIER", cause not everybody can fuckin afford to! Money and opportunity is always the name of the game...deush
 
I personally think that comp skiers are better because the reason they win is for being consistant plus they stil do really hard tricks

The guys you see in the movies who ahve better segments then comp skiers like tanner arent as consistant those rly nice tricks they cld be doing might take them 20 tries before they land it but you cant see it in a movie because they edit it out
 
i completely disagree. if a lot of guys wanted to hit chads switch then they would have. they had all season to do so. tanner was pushing the limits of skiing. i just cant believe you say its not something unique when it was only tanner n jon to hit it switch and tanner dominated the jump. how can it not be unique whne they were the only people to do so?
 
if you think you have to do something entirely new that nothing even similar to it has been done before skiing is done inovating. Seriously if somebody went and zero spinned a 70 foot cliff that would be very innovative but by your logic it wouldn't be. Pollard has been doing zeros off of smaller cliffs and people have been droping 70 foot cliffs for a long time so bringing the 2 together would be something new.

And Base jumping on skis is incredibly stupid. What a wasted day at the hill. "Oh ya we're skiing lines nobody's ever skiied before" ya too bad the lines you're skiing are 8 seconds long and you take the easiest possible way down and ski half of it without your poles. Seriously nobody wants to watch 20 minutes of that
 
you might wanna add jon to that list. I don't think many people understand how intense hitting chad's switch would be. 55MPH, switch, then you've gotta do a trick that's hard enough when you're going half that speed over a huge gap that would scare the hell out of you going through the air.
 
It's not so much as that no one else has done it, becuase no one else has done a 255 foot clif but I still don't think that it was inovative. What I am trying to say was that sooner or later someone was going to do a switch 9 over chads that year and it was really just the first person to be intown and fealing it that was going to do it. If it had been schiller instead of Taner that was there I am preety sure that he would have doen it, same with almost every other skier that is in that catagory, (Taner, Jon, Peter, Schiller ect.) that is what makes it non inovative in my opinion, If you had replaced andy at piramids with almost any other skier I am almost 100% positive that that skier would not have done a zero, becuase that was not the direction that the skiing comunity was going at the time. Inovation requires individual thinking, not thinking what the rest of the skiing comunity is thinking, That why people started going off gromed runs, that is why people started jumping off of clifs, this is why people started going in terain parks, (skiers and boarders),this is how twin tips were invented, this is why people started building bc jumps, why skiers started spining and later going off axis, and rails, all that is inovative, but Taner's switch 9 over chads was just fallowing the trend that skiing was taking.

And why do you think I am bringing down Tanner Hall, I think he is a great skier and has done inovative things in the past, but I just don't think this was one of them.
 
don't u people have anything better to do than talk about, 20 year old people, like middle-school girls, with oral fixations....... ?????
 
i never said i injoyed watching base jumping, I don't, and I thinkit is a wast of movie time, I would rather watch taner rant on how his life sucks and compare how not being able to ski for a few months is like dieing, then watch skibase jumping, but it is still inovative, when people started skiing backwards and going in the terrain parks most people said it was stupid, some still do. people do not have to think something is cool for it to be inovative. It seem's to me that you consider things that impress you, and things that you like watching are inovative, and nothing else.
 
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