Kenny Salvini ruins skiing

I think it would be worth ttotally worth it.  It would keep the less serious people out.. and maybe the parks would be less crowded..
 
Word up, they've implemented the park pass at Wachusett, in a very similar style, mad forms, some shitty video with Shauawn White making love to a helmet, and $5. Wa used to be gaper haven with mad gapers all over the fricking place, on every lip, landing, box, and spread in various locations throughout the pipe. Since the dawn of the park pass several seasons though, this is has been dramatically reduced. And the quality of the park has also dramatically increased. Yay!
 
oh I don't disagree at all about that. It does keep some people out of the park that is for sure.

I just wanted to point out that the waivers don't really help to much legally.

 
heres somthin that i dont think a lot of you get

from a link on the first page:

http://www.denverpost.com/skiing/ci_5682314

first of all, a lawyer is there to protect a client and make money. yeah its gay that he made money off this, but its his job. it doesnt mean that the lawyer completely sides with this, but hes not gonna say otherwise cause itd hurt the case. also, to those that said fuck lawyers, well thats just stupid. lawyers are a necessity to society, and whether you like it or not, they'l always be around. if somthin unfortunate does happen to you or ur family, you'l be crying for a lawyer to help you. so whether ur on the good or bad side of a case, dont bash the lawyers for it.

second, its not the lawyers fault that the jump wasnt built right. and, its not his fault that after many previous accidents, some very serious, the resort didnt even touch the jump.

however, i do believe what many of you are sayin is right (obviously). park passes are probably the most efficient way of keeping gaypers outa the park.

from that link, there is the colorado safety act. other states should get somthin like this. if the jump was built right in the first place and the fall wasnt due to changing weather conditions(which the opposite lawyer could have easily defended) and if there weren't many previous injuries, then the lawsuit probably woulda been dropped. the judge told him he assumed responsibility of hiting it in the first place, but the past occurances is what really got him the money.

What i dont understand is why RCR is taking jumps out completely. like others have said, try to find other places to go if you can. the case has nothing against building jumps, its building them incorrectly that they're fighting for.

i think more people should be mad at the resorts than the case itself, because they weren't fighting for "no jumps in parks". its simply a reaction RCR is taking to ensure that jumps aren't built incorrectly at their mountains by not building them at all.

 
I would be more than happy to fill out a 20 page legal document and watch an hour video to keep our larger parks population of gaypers decrease to zero, oh and out of curiosity want to go into detail about the drunk gayper?
 
man this is a pretty stupid statement. a jump is a fucking jump. It is designed to throw you into the air. Are you saying that you hit a jump before seeing the gap, take off angle, landing or any of this shit. no fucking way. if a sign is posted before the jump, you know it is coming, it is your responsible for how you approach it. 
 
Well that's just silly. Tell me how its the resort's fault. Yes, they built a jump with a shitty landing, but Kenny over shot it by 50 ft. It looks like he left a resort made feature, to land on the ground, a feature made by mother nature. If you land on the ground, the liability should reside with yourself, and volcanoes and folded mountain ranges.

And another thing...

Does anyone else think it's a good idea for Mr. Bishop to have his own show called Bishop's Terrain Park Nightmares? He should go to the resort, hit all of the shitty/dangerous features, and then start screaming and swearing at resort owners and cat drivers.

i mean, i'd watch that...
 
I have read plenty of your posts and I already don't respect your opinion based on what i have read.. 

First off, you can't tell me what i would do. You don't know me or how I think. 

I know exactly how I would handle the situation, because i have a PRINCIPLES. 

I OWN UP to my OWN MISTAKES. 

Yea,I would wonder how the fuck i was going to pay for the rest of my life. But I wouldn't go around sueing people for something that wasn't there fault. That asshat might as well sue the hospital for not fixing him, and sue the person who made the car that drove him to the mountain. They are equally as at fault for his situation that the mountain is. EXACTLY ZERO PERCENT.

Second, do you really think I expect kids to measure angles? Are you that thick? 

I expect kids to use some COMMON SENSE and not huck their meat on a stupid jump. Speed check it, ask someone how fast you go, follow someone into it. If you think it's bad, DON"T HIT IT. it's simple. 

And, if you hurt yourself, realize that it's your fault, and your decision. 

No, I'm not paralyzed. I know people that are paralyzed. Fuck, my dad couldn't lift me as a baby because he almost destroyed his neck riding a motorcycle. He hit a log that washed onto a track that was maintained. Did he sue anyone? No, he realized that maybe he should have checked the track before he rode. Just like Kenny should have checked that jump before he skied into it too fast. 

 
Thats assuming that he has no health care plan, which he most likely does.  If he doesn't have insurance then yeah, its going to cost him more than 14 mil over the course of his lifetime. But with a decent health care plan, much of those costs would be covered by his insurance.
 
Honestly, I'm not sure. I hit the jump a week before Kenny Salvini's accident, and it was fine. Other people on here have said it was a little flat, but I disagree. He just massively overshot it and missed the entire landing.
 
u guys know that he went over 100ft from the lip of the jump. u know how fucking fast u have to go to go 100ft. the jump itself was less than 40ft lip to landing i'm pretty sure. he overshot by more than 70 ft. Its 100% his fault. Doesn't matter how well the jumps made, a 40 ft jump is not gonna have landing for u to clear it by 70 ft. come on.
 
Anyone who thinks this lawsuit is not ridiculous is, in my opinion, over analizing the situation. The kid went way to fast for the size jump he was hitting and got hurt. No matter how "bad the jump angles" were you should not be able to place responsibility on the resort. You could probably look at any jump at any resort and make an argument that the angles are not how the should be. And what I really don't understand is that if you overshoot a jump by that much it makes no difference whether or not the jump angles were correct. How can that even be an argument? The jump landing would have had to of extended down the entire hill to keep that idiot from getting hurt.
 
exactly^

If they had the CO safety act the resort would have been fine. physics doesn't mean shit when u overshoot by 70 ft. ask simon dumont
 
we flamed this guy pretty good last winter on his blog.

I remember I told him he should have one of his friends push him off a cliff so he can't bring any more shame to his family.
 
all my assumptions are based on the assumption that RCR canceling their jumps and all the rumors (both true and untrue) about other resorts cutting down their jumps this year are directly linked to kenny's lawsuit.

what im trying to get at is where do we go from here? how do we get resorts to make good decisions?

a resort's insurance company may not be too elated about the possibility of paying 14 million so they preemptively jack up the resort's premium.....and then the resort jacks up ticket prices to cover the cost

or the resort tries to be responsible and pays for an engineering firm to design its jumps....i dont think $10 park passes would recoup the engineering fees....so ticket prices go....up?

or the resort simply can't take the risk of raising ticket prices so cuts its jumps to avoid the higher premium or engineering fees?

or would be best for the resort to cover its ass legally better and pay a law firm

to write a better liability waiver on the back of tickets? or maybe just for in the park? you write "i will not sue the resort for ANYTHING" and get it notarized?

i just think that unless a line gets drawn SOON before more parks cancel their jumps or lawyers use kenny's case as a baseline for more lawsuits.....

 
just cuz he ate shit doesn't mean everyone else should have to sit on their ass with him too, what a dickhead. He is tryin to get everyone to feel his pain in a way, he can't hit jumps so the rest of the world shouldn't either right?

WRONG

I end on this not, what a muff!
 
here is a message i just sent to him over myspace:

Let me start out this short and hateful message by informing you that I am an avid skier. I ski roughly 60 days a year. It is how I define myself and is my driving force for life.

That being said, who the hell do you think you are? My local hill recently took all of the jumps out of our terrain park. When I inquired as to why, of all things, my hill would do this, I got a simple response: lawsuit.

Remember that day when you went into that terrain park? when you didnt look at the landing of the jump,then hit the jump you obviously werent experienced enough to hit? Remember that feeling of helplessness in the air as you sailed over the landing and crashed to the ground? Remember trying to move your legs, but realizing you were unable? You were immobilized. Helpless. hopeless. That is how the entire freeskiing nation feels at this point because of your lawsuit. I hope youre proud.

-A downtrodden skier
 
People need to take responsibility for their actions.

Snowqualmie didn't make him over shoot that jump by 50 feet.

He chose to do that by himself and did not make the right judgement.

While I still feel bad for the guy I don't believe the snowqualmie owes him a damn thing.
 
I talked to this kid on myspace and asked him about all of this shit and heres what he had to say.

Well, since you are the first out of the two dozen e-mails I've

received from whatever new message board popped up this time that was

actually somewhat reasonable... I'll give you my best response.

I

took COMPLETE responsibility for MY PART of my accident. I sat there

and said flat out to the jury that I realized I was going too fast when

I hit that jump. The fact is, this "small 15-foot tabletop" was

TERRIBLY designed and maintained even worse. What these message boards

don't talk about is the fact that there were more than 60 accidents on

that jump in the two months the mountain was open that year... more

than triple that of any of the three previous complete seasons, and

they didn't even bother to check them out. Five days before my

accident, a sponsored snowboarder overshot that jump the same way I

did, and broke his back (wasn't paralyzed, though)... and spent two

hours waiting for an ambulance with ski patrol spitting out his broken

teeth and telling them they needed to extend the landing, and still

they did nothing. And then, two hours before I was hurt, I kid was

carted off the same jump for the same thing... still nothing. And then,

I hit that jump going A LITTLE too fast (I'd been skiing for 20 years,

I wasn't an idiot)... and I ended up overshooting that jump HUGE. I

fell 37 feet onto FLAT ICE, that's more than four stories... you can't

tell me that's not a horrifically built jump. But do you think they

checked out their park after that? Nope. A friend I was with that night

took pictures, video and wrote a letter telling them they needed to

investigate their jumps, and they didn't... and nine days later a

19-year-old kid DIED overshooting a jump.

And THAT'S why I went

through at the lawsuit... for safety reasons. I have nothing against

this sport, I love it, like I said I spent 20 years doing it, and have

ZERO intention of ruining anything, but I felt like it was my

responsibility to bring light to the issue and try to ensure that these

jumps will be built correctly, so that some 10 year old kid that just

saw Sean White win his 32nd gold medal in the X-games doesn't go

bombing down a hill and hit a jump like the one I did, and wind up dead.

Trust

me, though... I understand everyone's beef with me. I had no idea it

would have this kind of affect (shutting down parks)... but I'll bet

money that it's temporary. Yeah, maybe parks will suck this year, and

maybe these wedge designs aren't the way to go, but I sincerely hope

that what my lawsuit accomplishes in the long run are some of the most

amazing terrain parks imaginable that are designed in such a way that

all the UNNECESSARY risk is eliminated for the most part... and that's

why my lawyers and I are hoping to get involved with some upcoming

legislature to make that dream a reality.

Anyways, like I

said... thanks for being somewhat cool about it, and not just sending

death threats or any other bullshit like that. I'm not try to change

your mind... but hopefully this clears things up a little on where I

stand...

----------------- Original Message -----------------

From:

Date: Nov 13, 2007 11:32 AM

First

off let me say that i am in no way here to yell at you and express any

hateful or demeaning feelings i have towards you. All im asking is for

a few answers.

I full understand that your life from here on

out is going to be extremely difficult and that the lawsuit that you

filed was basically necessary in order to get that money to help pay

for all of your medical bills which are going to be extremely

expensive. All in all i understand that the lawsuit was necessary and

that there really wasnt any way around it. What i dont understand is

why you couldnt be responsible for your own actions. You seem like a

normal guy who knows what hes doing when it comes to sports. You seem

to be an extremely good wakeboarder and seem to do pretty good and

other sports. All you did was overshoot a small 15' table top. It was a

simple misjudgment on your part and yet you feel the need to punish the

ENTIRE freesking and snowboarding community? I dont know if your clued

in to whats been happening with the moutains all over the United States

and Canada but let me fill you in a little bit.

The RCR,

Canadian Rockies, Have completely BANNED all jumps from any of their

mountains. The RCR includes 5 major resorts, two of which were known

for having quality terrain parks and know those terrain parks are

reduced to nothing. Within the united states know all jumps are not

allowed to have any 'kick' whatsoever and all jumps must be made in a

wedge shaped form with flat takeoffs. They must also have a landing

that is twice as long as its takeoff which is extremely tiny. I dont

know if you know this from experience or not but a jump with no kick is

WAY harder to overshoot than a jump with a flat takeoff. And when i say

WAY harder i mean it. You will guaranteed see more kids overshoot a

wedge style jump than a kicker. Terrain parks as we know it around

North America are being reduced to nothing and ruining a sport for

hundreds of thousands of people.

So why couldnt you just be responsible for your actions?




 
official reports from his accident say he landed over 100 feet from the take off of the jump, i just cant remember what # over 100. sounds like a lot of gapers at his mountain.
 
dont fucking send him hatemail 

that is ridiculous and what are you going to accomplish other than making a paralyzed skier cry himself to sleep 

everyone needs to grow up and get off the "bash the kid who sued the ski resort" bandwagon. 

im sure the ski resort did a lot more research into the situation than any of us know about and the jury would not have awarded him what they did if the resort was not partially at fault 

 
me too. I'd rather have 10$ in my bank account and full use of my body... damn.

You guys are all about skiing, well he can't ski anymore. He can't do what he wants, thats the point. The lawsuit is another thing, but his life is fucked now.
 
that makes sense. Thanks for keeping it chill.

To all of you out there...

WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU SEND AN ALREADY CRIPPLED MAN HATE MAIL??? You deuchebags! He's already injured enough physically and probably mentally after he realized that RCR is shutting down parks.
 
Sending this kid hate mail and death threats is going to accomplish absolutely nothing. If you have nothing good to say to Kenny than dont say anything at all please.
 
After seeing that guy's response, I totally see where he is coming from, and I don't blame him at all for what happened. What happened to him sucks, and he had to cover his medical bills, and I understand how he felt he needed to keep other people safe by getting the company to build their jumps correctly. He could have never predicted this outcome, and sure, part of it IS his fault, but not all of the blame should be focused on him.

The RCR is just plain dumb for not trying to make high quality, well constructed jumps, and just removing them altogether. They could have employed an overseer of tasks or a supervisor to test the jumps and make sure they're safe and whatnot. The complete removal of the jumps was an overreaction.

Sure, in the U.S. (Where I am) we aren't allowed to have "kick" on our jumps anymore, but hey, at least we still have some way of getting airborne.

And don't send the guy hatemail. Sending hatemail to a crippled guy is like beating up a mentally handicapped kid.
 
What I want to know is if this guy would have taken the time to get a park pass to hit that jump in that park?

His testimony/comment, might mean something. We have the luxury of traveling tons of different places and there is a huge difference in the parks that have park pass programs and those that don't. Park passes, accredited park builders/groomers are the answer moving forward.

He never mentions (that I saw) that he was an experienced park person in his email above. Whatever happened to start small?
 
This guy can be used as an ally! ................. Damn, I wish we were more organized.

Do not loose sight of this quote from his email.

"I sincerely hope that what my lawsuit accomplishes in the long run are some of the most amazing terrain parks imaginable that are designed in such a way that all the UNNECESSARY risk is eliminated for the most part... and that's why my lawyers and I are hoping to get involved with some upcoming legislature to make that dream a reality."
 
Kenny was trying to do the right thing. Unfortunately, his lawsuit has sent many resorts and insurance companies into panic, trying to prevent these types of accidents/lawsuits. Summit at Snoqualmie's holding company Booth Creek just sold the resort and 3 others to a larger firm because they took such a huge hit over the lawsuit.

As a skier who rides at Summit at Snoqualmie, I can say that they have the shittiest record of park maintenance and jump construction of any mountain. There are no posted signs, no indication of speed or type of jump and they do not have a park difficulty/rating system. Several times over I have seen kids overshoot booters and tables at Snoqualmie and be carted down by patrol, just to have the jump reopened with no alteration or safety signs. I know this kind of stuff goes on at every mountain, but at Snoqualmie they always seem to be ignorant, as if they could care less if the construction of a jump is up to par or not.
 
I don't know. In a sense he could very well be an ally. It is usually

the extreme cases the can get the most recognition, and obviously his

has bang ($14 mill) and a sympathy story. I would hope there are more stable regulations, perhaps through legislation on a state level or something, that would help prevent astronomical lawsuits like this, but there are still some issues to be had with what he did. His testimony for example(at least

based on what he has said to me and to others such as posted on this

page) really stretches reality. I hit the very same jump he did, it was

small. He must have been going unbelievably fast, not just "a little

too fast." Shit, to fall the equivelent of 4 stories... I don't know.

Really, it seems like he was so much more at fault than he is willing

to say. Not to mention the repercussions of a $14 million settlement

makes anybody with any fiscal stability or instability nervous as hell,

and makes insurance oh so pricey.

And it is slimey for Mr.

Salvini here to say some guy died hitting a jump at the same ski area,

as though it was caused by negligence on behalf of the ski area. The

kook who died was trying to land (or some have guessed) on the landing

of the next jump below it... Just imagine that for a second; the guy

was not wearing so much as a shirt on his torso at night (just screams

idiocy) and went something like 300 vertical feet of rather steep

groomed slope into a 20-30ft table. Just thought I'd refute his little statement there.

That said, the terrain in which the park is on (at Summit Central) is strange and not very suitagble at all for a park. The only reason it is where it is at is because 1) there is a high speed quad, 2) they put a bunch of money into infrastructure there, such as light towers, snowmaking system, etc, and 3) that particular part of the ski area is open all day every day, whereas a more suitable place (Summit West) is one of the best places to build a park in the NW in terms of pitch of slope. But Central, damn, It undulates between steep (too steep to build anything on) and flat, so it is very, very easy to go too fast, and it happens all the time. But good riders should be able to recognize it, and Kenny did not, and many consequences emerged.

Essentially, I think this was mishandled, but who am I to say that? They straight up sued for his entire life's expected medical costs, plus more (in the mid $30 million range), which essentially says that they believed the fault was entirely on the mountain. But that's the system I guess. I don't even know where I'm going with this so I'll stop.
 
the guy is definately a fucking idiot but dont put all the blame on him. the resort should have handled it a different way. they need to impliment a park pass and like a 1 day training class. the resort also fucked it up
 
before kenny and his lawyers march off to court again, maybe a line of communication can be opened between him and the freeski community?

so that mutual goals could be accomplished instead of this feeling that we all got blindsided?

he stated that his goal is to see safer parks and im sure resorts would like to be safer from 14 million dollar payouts. therefore if resort demonstrates proper jump design, maintenance, and safety procedures.......resort cannot be sued?
 
not to be a dick or anything, but I know I read some article saying he over shot the jump by more than 30 feet. They also had an average of how many people hit the jump and how many were injured. If I remember right it was about 1-5 percent. The jump seemed fine from what I read, the guy just bombed it from way to far away and as a result almost killed himself. He is setting progression back because he had no clue what he was doing. A landing area maybe short, but if you overshoot it by 30 ft, thats your fault.
 
Couldn't find the site while posting that but I just found it. Says he flew about 110 feet through the air. From reading this article, it seems to me that this kid bombed a jump and rolled down the windows as he realized he had WAY WAY WAY to much speed. I'm going to take a guess and say this jump was not a 110 foot table, and if it was he was obviously way out of his league.

http://www.skiareamanagement.com/news/article.php?tid=1333
 
ok, this occurred at my home mountain. i was there the day that the accident happened, and most likely missed seeing it by 2 min.

my official statement: the accident was entirely his own fault.

the second you get off the lift to enter the park, there is a billboard around 8ft x 4ft. the entire billboard is covered with safety tips, and liability awareness.

to clear the jump he hit, you need to start from about 35 yards uphill. from what i heard, he started from the very top of the park, about 200-250 yards uphill.

when i saw him on the ground, he was about 100 yards past the landing. even with a tremendous amount of sliding, he would never have been there if he had not overshot at least half of that.

i understand, the kid has medical bills beyond comprehension, but to sue the resort to get that money, claiming negligence is irresponsibility at it's finest.
 
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