i think that more rules will confuse viewers. there is already so much jargon. It was annoying enough hearing my coworkers try to make jokes about 'grabbing japan' and while trailing off after saying a series of numbers... "oh ya he did fifteen thirty double or some...thing.."
i suggest we increase the complexity of judging. hear me out. the judges need to enforce variety, out this will grow creativity.
I want judges to penalize riders for doing the same run. i gotta admit, half way through the olympic finals i was getting bored of watching everyone trying to perfect their previous run. I recommend the following deductions across runs:
general line: deductions for hitting the same features in a line, from run to run. (best run of three? there should be three features to choose from at every section. best of two? only need to have two features at each section.) judges will keep track of each feature that every each skier hits, every line.
getting onto rails: deductions for getting onto rails always the same way. this is already part of the judging, but they only take into account the standard 8 (left foot, right foot, lips, and those 4 again from sw), but if you add in nose butters and tail butters, now we got way more options. spinning onto the rail makes it a different trick onto the rail but same restrictions apply. adding a tap on the way in also makes it a different trick.
sliding rails: deductions for doing the same kind of slide... a switch up makes it a different slide. same with surface sw, blind etc... hand drag slide, grab slides, getting low and wobbles also would be different slides.
out of rails: spinning left and right, front and blind, cork and other axis would be considered different from each other. adding a tap to any spin out constitutes a new trick as well
jumps: deductions for choosing the same jump for every run (if there is more than one jump in the section) seriously it pissed me off watching all but 3 skiers avoid the hip jump at the olympics. obviously still same deductions are in place with spins and grabs, except the carry from run to run as well. deductions for doing the same spin (fucking trip 1440) from run to run and same with grabs. except, carves, hand drags, butters, pre spins, AND KNUCKLES all consititute a new trick. this way, we dont see 4 skiers doing trip 14 high mute, instead we get 4 drastically different tricks. im probably missing a few things here, grab switch ups and stuff.
challenges of reality: this would mean judges have to remember a lot.. this is a serious amount of data for a person to juggle in their brain... instead, develop software that keeps track of this complicated run data. a lot of the tech behind big data stuff can handle this stuff easy. we need to track what features each skier skied
on every run and what trick they did. ya, that's a lot of data... but what if the judges didnt have to think about that stuff??? instead they actually can focus on the skiing... basically, skier does a run, analytic checks for score deductions (yes, we can teach an algorithm to figure out what a seatbelt japan looks like... and until that day we can have a team of four ski nerds enter all this data while the run happens pretty quick... ok this part is chunky but im serious the software can be built. for sake of this discussion, lets imagine the software exists and it can detect if a skier's run 1 is different from run 2 and 3 according to all those parameters i laid out up there...) this has two effects:
1. skiers focus on creativity, rather than consistency. (consistency gets fucking boring.)
2. judges focus on the execution of tricks
what do you think? would this be too complicated for skiers to build their lines around? i think it would be a lot better than them just picking 6 rail tricks they can land almost every time and repeating them for the whole event
downsides is that we might see more botched lines... but in return, we would get to watch an incredible variety of tricks and a lot less trip 14's
