Competitions fucking suck

corona

corona

Active member
They're fun to watch, but the amount of hate and divide that comes out of skiing competitions is disgusting.

Every time competitions come around there's the inevitable hate on females. Certain athletes always get shit on. Competitors hating on each other. And it all takes the spotlight over how awesome the skiing is.

I've been reading through a lot of the articles and threads on the xgames and besides a few highlights it really just leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth.

It's sad to see the amount of negativity that comes out of such a small and tight nit community. And it only gets worse each year. This year we have the added "I lost so much respect for such and such because they went to an FIS event instead of xgames".

Not stoked on what large competitions do to the freeski community.
 
I enjoy watching events set up in a session format, like 9 Knights or B&E invitational. I just believe that it represents the view I have on free skiing much more accurately.
 
13309894:Burgy said:
I enjoy watching events set up in a session format, like 9 Knights or B&E invitational. I just believe that it represents the view I have on free skiing much more accurately.
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This and West Coast Sessions

I fucking love west coast sessions
 
Honestly I think competitions are fun to watch. Halfpipe today, it was awesome at the end. Seeing all the guys trying to battle it out basically caused some of the highest amplitude pipe hits out there. That's the side of competitions I like, but it definitely agree that the drama that comes around competition has no place in skiing. Competitions can be great at times, and I would hate to see a world with all filming and no competing at all, but the drama around it is pointless and stupid
 
From an entertainment perspective, I don't like watching people injure themselves. I don't like watching people who like watching people injure themselves.

More philosophically, I think healthy competition is preferable to outright war between people vying for power and then suppression of competitors (probably what is happening at x-games - lack of good sportsmanship.)

Some type of crowdsourced voting might work - although that could be prone to cheating, favoritism or being rigged (as can official voting anyhow.)

Is there a website that enables crowdsourced voting from live competition streams?
 
13310536:ADRIA-T.PIMP said:
From an entertainment perspective, I don't like watching people injure themselves. I don't like watching people who like watching people injure themselves.

More philosophically, I think healthy competition is preferable to outright war between people vying for power and then suppression of competitors (probably what is happening at x-games - lack of good sportsmanship.)

Some type of crowdsourced voting might work - although that could be prone to cheating, favoritism or being rigged (as can official voting anyhow.)

Is there a website that enables crowdsourced voting from live competition streams?
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X-Games tried that for big air in 2008 and a double front flip ended up beating a dub cork 12. Crowdsourcing something like that just doesn't work since the average viewer isn't educated enough.
 
I agree for the most part; fun to watch but can create some disagreement and drama between fans, judges, riders, etc. However, despite the problems stemming from the the slopestyle drama this year I would say that the superpipe competition and big air were both really good for the sport; entertaining, progressive, and fun. These two events specifically you could see riders were just getting stoked to see the sport progress and it was cool to watch. So I don't think all comps are bad for skiing, some people just gotta cool it with how they react publicly to the results
 
I do think that big comps are kinda shit for freeskiing, not the right spirit and all...but let's face it, our industry needs cash, and events like x games bring cash. Is it bad? Yes, cos freeskiing should be about everything but cash, but I don't see that stopping anytime soon, pros need sponsors, sponsors need cash, and here we are again.

Only solutions, change the rules to the comps, have them much more style oriented (but would that even make a difference?), change the judges (although I thought the judging for men slope/pipe/bigair was pretty good this year).

On a happy note, big air was won with a single (ok, it was a 12, but still, style was definitely a big factor in it's judging)

Hate on woman's skiing? Well I mean it is REALLY tempting to hate, I mean fuck, men are doing back to back dubs on the kickers and aren't even on the podium, women win it by doing 540s almost not even making the grab. Yes there's a universe between woman and man freeskiing and no it's not normal, and not that big of a gap in other sports. Why is it like that? not so sure myself, but give it some time, and women will get to dubs, I can assure that (look a Sildaru, she's gonna blow up more that any man ever did, she's beating everyone at like 14 or so). Plus look at other acrobatic sports, gymnastics, trampoline, ice skating...women are always close to the level of men if not better. Women's time will come. We just have to wait a little.
 
Are you serious? Competitions are fucking awesome. It's not every day we can watch skiing on tv and see the best in the world go at it. nothing else pushes the sport more than comps. If we didn't have them then we would still be watching slope events where the winning trick would be a 540 no grab off a damn 35 foot money booter. I don't know about you but I'm glad we have them.
 
I think competitions are good, but the skiers are becoming to competitive. Instead of having fun they just try and get the best score possible.
 
13311363:Analdestroyer said:
the skiers are becoming to competitive. Instead of having fun they just try and get the best score possible.
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I would hope that skiers are competitive in a fucking competition. A competition is about trying to get the best score possible, so they must be doing something right if they are trying to score the highest.
 
13311352:medialcortex said:
Wcs is so damn sick I was stoked to watch the last couple, but I heard its not happening this year!
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13311065:McLS said:
change the rules to the comps, have them much more style oriented
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These two things really don't work.

Style comes from creativity, and creativity comes from freedom. Style =/= less rotation, nor does it equal octo-grabs.

Sure both of those can form style, but just doing a cork 3 genie isn't stylish. You have to make it look good, and rules saying 'it must look good' means you need to define good, which is why 'style' means 'technically flawless' to judges right now.

We need less rules but a shift in the judges mindset, if they stop rewarding spinning as much, which is kinda what happened at big air. Goepper wasn't challenged in slopestyle because no-one put a full run down close to his (except Woodsy, but he washed out his landing way too much), you could put that down to conditions which were shit. Kinda disappointing considering how dull Goeppers rails were. I didn't watch halfpipe.
 
13310232:xRAPHAELx said:
This and West Coast Sessions

I fucking love west coast sessions
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Amen!

Amen to all of it. I live and breathe for freeskiing, emphasis on FREE. I can't stand any kind of judged competition because they're trying to tell me that such and such trick is better than another one. Who cares what trick was better we're supposed to be about having fun and skiing any way we want to. In my opinion the very best skier on the mountain is the guy with the biggest smile on his face at the bottom of the run. He's having the most fun, therefore he's skiing "better" than anyone else because he's getting the very most out of it.

Hate and discrimination aside, competitions just suck.

/Rant
 
I think that competitions are fun to watch and everything. I actually like how excited people get over skiing and how into it they get. I think that sometimes competitors say really negative things because they just need to go have fun and ski for a while without all of the stress and structure of the event they're competing in. That's just my 2 cents on the whole thing
 
excuse my ignorance, can't say i'm all that in touch with the freeskiing comp scene just yet, but is there an event similar to red bull ultra natural in skiing?

would love to see more comps head in this direction, mixing natural with man-made features

 
13311352:medialcortex said:
Wcs is so damn sick I was stoked to watch the last couple, but I heard its not happening this year!
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Whoa whoa where did you hear such shshenanigans?
 
13311669:plyswthsqrrls said:
excuse my ignorance, can't say i'm all that in touch with the freeskiing comp scene just yet, but is there an event similar to red bull ultra natural in skiing?

would love to see more comps head in this direction, mixing natural with man-made features

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Not exactly, though Redbull just hosted another edition of Linecatcher in France. I'm not sure about Cold Rush happening anymore but that is rad as f*ck plus the Orage Masters went to Retallack last year and everyone threw down. And we've got the Xgames RealSki video contest that always produces quality edits.
 
13310548:Holte said:
X-Games tried that for big air in 2008 and a double front flip ended up beating a dub cork 12. Crowdsourcing something like that just doesn't work since the average viewer isn't educated enough.
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yeah, I immediately had that thought when I posted, but realized there could be a crowd favorite category, or have the crowd vote as an extra judge. Anyway, having that information and participation there can't hurt (at least if it's added as an extra category), and could even raise revenues.
 
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