Olympic Moguls predictions

A_Longley

Member
It's getting pretty close to the start of the 2010 games in vancouver now, who are your predictions for winning the titles?

Could this year be the first year that athletes have won consecutive golds with Dale Begg Smith and Jen Heil dominating the world cup rankings right now...
 
All I can say is that if the gold medal mens run has the same trick on the bottom air as the last place womans run (backflip iron cross), I'm going to puke.
Please, Bilodeau, 4 years ago in Torino you were doing cork 10 on the bottom jump, do NOT do a fucking backflip cross in Vancouver, it's a MASSIVE step back for your sport.
 
that kind of shit doesn't matter as was clearly seen in torino. kaari tra did a cork 7 off the top jump while jen heil did a 3 and still won.

it's not about the degree of difficulty of your airs but more about how cleanly you do them. it's unfortunate but that's just the way everything is scored.
 
Exactly, and it's that scoring system and judging that is the problem.
At least back in the day when guys were doing quad twisters, it was a much harder trick than what the shitty girls were able to pull off the same jump. So you had to do the most difficult tricks (at the time) to be able to win. Now you can win by doing the easiest tricks, and that is bulllllllllshit. FIS needs to wake up and realize how much this shit is making mogul skiing look lame, and start rewarding people who actually push themselves in the jump department.
Back when Edgar won the first Olympic moguls event, he had to do a daffy twister spread off of a mogul to do so. He would not have had a chance of victory if he had done the same spread eagle as what the low-end girls were throwing. Maybe those tricks aren't cool anymore, but at least back then the guys had to push themselves and do something badass in the air in order to podium.
It's not a jump competition, and skiing should still be the priority, but jumping is part of the equation, and they need to start promoting something other than "take the easy route and it should still win".
 
kashima is the man... shame him and landom gardner are injured.

in no particular order my top 5 are:

Dale Begg-Smith, Jesper Bjoernlund, Guilbaut Colas (did the double flip at the tignes airwaves), Alexandre Bilodeau, PA Rousseau
 
Nate Roberts did a double at Nationals practice years ago. It's not a scorable jump so you won't see anyone do one until it has been accepted by the USSA and FIS.

I'm not a fan of the US men's team. Their best bet for a gold would be to rip up the course, spray water onto it and let Morse have at it.

I'll guess the podium will include Dale, Guilbaut, and Bilodeau. Unfortunately, the course is a joke and will not separate the good skiers from the not as good.

Cheers to PA, he has been in this game since the beginning and finally has an Olympic Games to show for it.
 
If those are indeed the winning mens airs, then fucking hallelujah. I am praying that is the case. (I'm also praying that those guys start to grab their cork sevens).
The problem I'm talking about, is that the winning mens run in almost every single moguls world cup this season has included a fucking backflip iron cross, the easiest jump in the sport these days, and also what the last place girl generally does in her run.
You should not be able to win by doing the easiest shit, but the way they are scoring, you can.
 
mark abmas girlfriend, kristi richards, she grew up in the same small town i live in and she skis my hill, and she is 1st for womens mogul skiing in the world. she is at my home mountain wiht mark abma alot.
 
Isn't all this controversy about rules in moguls airs the reason why our sport of "free"skiing was created? So we could do whatever the hell we like? If they listened to input of the skiers then our sport would probably not exist as it is today.
 
dude you don't know what you're talking about

everyone who's saying Degree of difficulty doesnt factor in... IT DOES, its part of the scoring system

it makes a huge difference

and heres what you're saying wrong:

- men are doing easy tricks

no, they're not at all, with double fulls becoming almost normal. mikael kingsbury is now working on triple fulls, and hes only 18 (or 19 now, i don't remember)

- back crosses are the easiest trick

theres a reason people still do them. it makes a huge difference towards speed and height. you can go HUGE on a back cross. like HUUUUGE. people do them for height and because they look the best. and they aren't easy to do like that, not at all. awesome back cross> alright double full is the same as

awesome cork 10> ugly cork 1800

- losing girls do back crosses

they do way easier tricks dude

like alot easier. only just recently girls started doing harder stuff and starting to do some good fulls and such. their tricks are being stepped up, but in no way are the best guys doing the worst girls tricks, not at all.

i mean one of the japanese girls did a double daffy at torino

and to clarify to everyone:

speed: 25% of score

airs: 25% of score

turns: 50% of score

so this competition isn't, and never was, about airs to be honest

if you have good enough airs and are fast and can turn well, you can be the best

and in that sense, ill be rooting for guilbaut colas, because he brings original airs, super fast/ agressive skiing, and the best hand/upper body positioning EVER to the table.

as for dale and bilodeau, i think dale could do really well or win, but i don't htink alex will take it.

 
Guilbaut is an amazing skier but his style very specialized to the cookie cutter courses they ski now. In my opinion part of the reason he has come onto the scene so hard in the last 2-3 years. He skis the current world cup courses the cleanest but would get it handed to him on anything that isn't perfect.

Phenomenal skier but not someone you can compare to previous generations due to how much the course construction has changed over the last few years.

 
yeah thats basically it, but this is where DD (your trick) comes in.
The most turn points you can get is 5.0 from each judge. Airs and time the maximum is 2.5, but they multiply it by how hard your trick was, an average trick gets you about a 1 (not sure the DD's they use for world cup, but for NORAMS a back lay is like just about 1) You can also go over perfect time (pace) and get more time points (to an extent).
Basically If your turns are not perfect, you can make up for it with harder tricks and faster times (the split ends up more like 40ish% and 30ish%)
I know it's confusing as hell and the only reason I know this is because my coach forced it onto me. I still miss moguls so damn bad. Seriously ripping a sick bump line in comp and knowing you killed it at the bottom is like the best feeling in the world. It all happens in like less than 30 seconds and you are so pumped/tired at the end.
 
Trust me, I know exactly what I'm talking about, and I know exactly how scoring works. Save the lecture and read what I wrote.
I never said that all men are doing easy tricks, what I said was that the majority of podium runs at World Cups this year have included shamefully easy jumps. Bilodeau and Beggsmith for example have been doing backflip crosses all season and still hitting the podium. That's the equivalent of a guy being able to podium in '98 with a spread eagle.
The DD range is fucked, they need to make the harder tricks worth more so that there is some motivation for guys to do those harder tricks. Instead, Bilodeau is now doing backflip crosses because strategically it is a better bet for him to do that instead of doing cork 10, which he was doing 4 years ago. That's a huge fucking step backwards in case you didn't notice.

 
I thought Kaari Tra was robbed and was seriously pissed with the judging when Jen Heli won.
Moguls is judged something along the lines of:
50% Technique25% Speed25% Air With Degree of difficulty thrown in there

BTW I'm a Canadian.
 
Haha whoa I didn't scroll down far enough in the thread to see other people already gave the lowdown on scoring...
 


Here's something fucked up a twister spread is scored the same as a helicopter.
And back layouts in mogul competitions make my eyes bleed. Back mutes aren't much harder than back crosses and they look so much better too.
 
Mike Morse has some of the sickest style of anyone on World Cup. Hopefully his breakout win will be in Vancouver.
 
Torino? That was four years ago bud, why don't you go onto the FIS site and pull the pdf of results from the most recent World Cup (placid). You will see that the 99% of the girls, including the 5 at the bottom of the results list, all did backflips.
And that's the point, even though air is only 25% of the score, it should still NOT be possible for a guy to win a World Cup if his run includes the same jump as what all the worst girls in the field are doing. They need to re-evaluate their DD range, bigtime.
Also, I agree with the guy above, Kari should have won Torino.
 
TRIPLE TWISTING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That's the extent of my moguls knowledge
 
All the olympic qualified skiers are here in Steamboat training, think i'll go watch a little practice later.
 
Jen definitely out-skied everyone else though, and her jumps were clean. It's the same argument as "I would rather see a smooth switch 7 than a hucked switch 10" we hear all too much, and people have different opinions (I agree with you).
For the mens this weekend, jumps are gonna play a much bigger part than usual. This course is seriously an easy course to ski, and It looks like it's going to be slushy. That means basically all these guys are going to fucking haul ass down the bumps and go huge on the jumps (I hope.) If everyone is getting great time/turn points, it's gotta come down to the jumps!
 
I know zero about mogul skiing...someone want to embed/link to some recent podium worthy runs?

I'd like to see what's going on.
 
To be honest that was a pretty shitty showing of what mogul skiing is.

So much backseat skiing and sloppy airs.

Check this out. (Men start around half way through

 
Back
Top