Why halfpipe skiing was not admitted to Vancouver 2010

Exactly.

FIS is a racers organisation and they would be shooting themselves in the foot by admitting halfpipe skiing. People don't seem to see the significance, but the combination of halfpipe snowboarding and halfpipe skiing in the olympics would cause a revolution in the wintergames, it would turn everything around. 

Either newschool skiing needs to start it's own federation to compete with FIS, preferably a newschool skiing + snowboarding federation.

OR

The big racing sponsors (Rossignol, Fischer, Head, Salomon, Völkl, etc...) need to be spoken to, need to be persuaded to put pressure on FIS.

a combination of both is probably the way to go.
 
Take this analogy. Wintergames are retardedly unpopular compared to the summergames, and the main sports are trash like biathlon, speed-skating, slalom...

Imagine the summergames were dominated by equivalent summer sports: nordic walking, race-rollerblading and running. Imagine then some smart asses wanted to introduce soccer, tennis and basketbal into the olympics. What reaction do you think the nordic walkers would have? FIS ARE THOSE NORDIC WALKERS.
 
Though disappointed, I'm certainly not surprised. There is already a lot of events and making room for more is difficult, yes the pipe is there, but where would the athletes sleep? Also, halfpipe judging is subjective, so skiercross is much easier to score since its a cut and dry time. And to whoever said that halfpipe would pull money from racing thats a joke. Racing is a sport that many people are passionate about and a part of skiing's history that is not going away. But with the growing support for pipe its almost guaranteed to make it for 2014, something to look forward to.
 
snowboarding didnt make it into the first olympics they tried for either. the first was 98 in japan, but they were denied for 94 in lillehammer. its hard for corporate sponsors to get behind such a new sport. who knows where it will be in 4 years
 
First, it's NOT too late for Vancouver, even though FIS says it's official.

Since the infrastructure (pipe) will already be in place, then it purely is a matter of a political desision that needs to happen, and that could theoretically happen as late as 2009.

Halfpipe snowboarding got into the 98 Olympics in less than two years (it was accepted in the fall of '96). This happened primarily because Japan really wanted it and pushed hard for it.

All of the FIS talk about "we need more nations competing" is not necessarily true. For example, the FIS snowboard World Cups 3 years before they became Olympic, were even more poorly attended than the FIS ski ones are now. A '95 FIS snowboard halfpipe World Cup in Breck had a total of 14 competitors, 12 of which were American. So there were certainly no great numbers of competitors or different nations competing in FIS comps at the time they were put into the Olympics.
 
I say we push it more. I really wanna see Dumont vs. Tanner in the finals and Dumont winning. The X Games final was sooo intense. thats how it would be and Should be
 
I am completely serious when I say that an ANTI-Olympics halfpipe event should be held in 2010, should the halfpipe event not get into the Olympics, it should be done as a protest, and an in your face event ridiculing FIS and THE IOC.

 
Thats a great idea, but only at last minute. In the meanwhile there should be a push to still and try to get it in there.
 
This shitty call by the Olympic Governing heads has more to do with keeping snowboarding seperate from skiing for marketing reasons. It's the same reason why FUCKING FUELtv barely if ever broadcasts hardcore freeride skiing.

The marketing fools want to keep the two sports seperate so they can zero in on old image stereotypes to keep their sponsors and target markets alligned. I personally hit up the program director at Fuel tv and asked him straight up.

" Why do you guys at Fuel pretty much ignore Newschool skiing?" "Have you seen what skiers are doing these days?"

His responce was " We do not consider "Skiing" to fit in with our featured 5 main "core sports" which our viewers identify our channel by".

So basically coming from a programmers point of view, Skiing was not "cool" or "core" enough for them to showcase. That is the problem here...The Olympics won't fully get behind it for the same lame ass reasons Fuel won't. It actually makes me a bit ill to see how far skiers have come in only 5 or so years in the halfpipe as apposed to snowboarders in the last 10 to 15. What are they really affraid of here?

Props to Sponsors and programmers like The Honda Ski tour,

X-games, Gravity, and so on WHO ARE NOT AFFRAID! They can actually look to the future and beyond old stereotypes to see what is actually happening in the Mountains. Freeride skiing is basically a revolution that some people don't want to accept; At least not yet.

Paul-
 
It's all just a popularity contest, like everything else. we're just not popular enough, thank god.
 
this is blessing in disguise here.

with all do respect for FIS and other institutions surrounding freestyle, the infastructure just isn't there yet. as a judge i have done scoring and attended judging clinics where we have gone over halfpipe and to be honest, i never really got the feeling it was greatly accepted by the judges.

unfortunately in FIS, judges do not specialize in events (ie moguls, pipe, arials). that being said, the same people judging bumpers and arialists are also judging halfpipe. this means there is that much more for the judges to absorb and the scoring doesn't make all that much sense.

as far as scoring is concerned, i don't know how many people have actually watched an FIS sanctioned pipe event but the scoring is off. in my opinion, FIS needs to concentrate more of the score on overall impression than on individual tricks. if someone does a 1080 at the bottom of the pipe with smaller amplitude it hurts them.

just my opinion, take it as you will

 
like many, dissapointed but not surprised. many of my young snowboarder friends say they are pushing to qualify for the olympics, not the x-games or the us open etc. therefore even the youth of today feels that the olympics have prestige and heritage that no other comp can compete with. one problem for the IOC etc., in introducing minority sports (which pipe skiing is), will it be contested by a number of nations? the answer is a simple no. x-games was a USA 1,2,3. not what they want. also, in the eyes of an IOC official, they have bent to popular demand too many times in years gone by. acceptance of board pipe, grabs in mogul skiing, inverted tricks in mogul skiing, ski cross, boarder cross and inverted tricks in figure skating (!). all of these were demanded by the public to challenge existing olymic and organisation rules, maybe they feel they need to stand strong to show that they are not the weak and meaningless comittee that many people think they are.
 
The bottom line here is Halfpipe Snowboarding IS and Olympic sport, and Halfpipe Skiing IS NOT.

And that is complete BULLSHIT!
 
I hate how the pros and major ski companies don't do more to get the message out to the world that skiing is going just as big in the pipe and any where else on a mountain as snowboarders. I understand how they wouldn't have pipe in the olympics last year for skiing because not enough people would show up but in 2010 skiing will be so far past snowboarding especilly in the pipe. I hate the FIS they are just stuck in the spandex days and they really don't support skiing because we are the people that are keeping this sport alive not them, all they do is hold it back. It will be 15 years before skiing will be on the same level as snowboarding and by then their probably be some new snow

sport that will take over. Until the pros, major skiing companies and us make this sport get into the spotlight it will continue to move along at a snails pace and get no recognition in the stupid public's mind. So let's tell the pros and ski companies to actually try to get this sport to seem cool again to the average person. THE FIS IS GOING TO KILL THIS SPORT
 
I would agree that most mogul and aerial judges haven't got the slightest clue what they're doing when judging a pipe event. But that's all the more reason to get ex-halfpipe athletes, ex-halfpipe coaches and other knowledgeable people in there, trained and then judging these events. As well, we need to tap into the snowboard judging system as a resource. No need to re-invent the wheel when those guys have been working on a criteria for two decades.

As Ski_Punx said, it is complete BS that snowboarding pipe is a 2010 event, but not ski pipe. This is especially so when FIS, as opposed to pipe, is pushing for skier cross of all things. With all due respect to aerials (which is a lot in my view), I think some of the powers that be are trying to protect that discipline here by keeping skier halfpipe out. In my view, that's no reason to deny halfpipe's entrance, especially when the pipe venue will already be in place.

MALONE: Thanks for the comment! INDESTRUCTIBLE was my last video. I wish I could do another, just no free time to travel and video anymore...

 
we should all just poach the shit out of the cypress pipe which probably will be a shit show anyway and then ski away into the gnar cypress pc areas with the hidden cliffs that regularily kill Surrey folk and lead the police/FIS people into a wild chase and create an olympic coup that wouldn't really do anything but would ultimately be pretty funny.
 
one of the main reasons is that there is absolutely no tv coverage in europe.. honestly nobody knows about freestyle skiing.. maybe they heard about snowboard halfpipe and stuff but definately not that there are guys who r doin that on skis.. and it would be another section that is dominated by the us... as long as there are so less riders from europe they won´t get it into the olympics.. there are candide, laurent favre, andreas hatveit... but who else? it´s just not enough to get an olympic spot
 
thats lame, sports progress over time and halfpipe skiing is deffinately a progression of frestyle skiing, which is an event, so if theres bullsit like crosscountry ski rifelry, there has to be halfpipe skiing
 
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