I'm interested in hearing from anyone who's used the men's FIS GS size ski from this last season. Mainly in the context of comparing vs the women's 188/30 for use in masters or USSA U16/U19 GS or SG. I noticed at least in some brands (Rossignol esp) it has a lot more width at the tail than the women's 188 even at similar >30M radius (as listed anyway). That seems like it might make it more user friendly, but of course if it's much stiffer maybe not. Any experience anyone can share?
-
For more information on how to avoid pop-up ads and still support SkiTalk click HERE.
Men's new 193/30 ski compared to old women's 188/30
- Thread starter JTurner
- Start date
Sorry, no direct experience on them yet. Hopefully i will get in a couple of pairs this year for testing. I did get direct feedback from a couple of racers at NCAA level that they actually struggled to come to grips with it compared to the 195/35 which surprised me. It seems that they are indeed a bit stiffer (the 35s had a pretty soft tip which helped initiation) and required some technique adjustment. They were both on the lighter side athletes though which may or may not have had something to do with it. Personally I would not advise it for any of my masters athletes unless they were <35, > 180# and already had a high level race background. I have found that the W 188/30 is pretty hard to overpower and works really well for us - shall we say more mature
- athletes.
- athletes.
Have you flexed them both? No first hand experience here, but the 193s that I’ve seen are a lot more ski than the 188s I’ve seen. A soft 188 can make a pretty tight turn. I’m sure they exist, but I have never personally seen a soft 193. I’m pretty out of the loop on the subject though. If you want a 193 and you are a mere mortal, look for a ski with an early rise tip (Rossignol?), or one that is available in multiple flexes (possibly Fischer, Atomic, not Nordica or Volkl). As @ScotsSkier mentioned, most masters athletes are skiing a 188/30 (men), 185 cheater ski (mostly men, some women), or 183/30 (women). I only know a couple masters racers who used the bigger ski, and often found that most race sets were unfavorable to that ski.
FYI on cheater skis, if you decide to go that route, find out if the ski/brand you are looking at is a purpose built masters GS ski or a slightly tweaked SX ski. The SX ski has the potential to be burly. I won't point fingers at specific brands, but hopefully the reps are upfront about what the skis are/aren't. Fischer and Nordica I think are purpose built.
Good point Bill. There is also the opposite issue. Some of the 185s are"tweener" skis aimed at U16s and do not stand up to well to a heavier/stronger athletes.
To the OP, funnily enough, I was actually just offered a pair of the latest spec 2019 Atomic WC 193/30 skis from one of the USST today. The plate on them is to all intents and purposes a marker piston plate! Dont think that has made it to the race stock that is generally available yet..
Forgot to add in my previous post. The USST athlete that offered me the skis also said that he found they hooked up and turned in much better, than the 35 m ski so he liked them. But. he also said that some that performed well on the 35 m ski had struggled to come to grips with the new ski...to be fair he did not name names but I have my suspicions...
Last edited:
- Joined
- May 6, 2017
- Posts
- 847
Just curious how you think a wider tail will be more user friendly? My take is that it would be less. A narrower tail usually provides more versatile turn shape, wider less versatile...tend to lock the ski into one shape. Maybe our definition of "user friendly" is different?
Thread Starter
TS
I meant it only in the sense of having more overall shape (admittedly due only to the additional length). In general more shape would help the ski carve merely by being tipped, whereas a straighter tail would release faster but possibly be more inclined to skid the bottom of turns.
- Joined
- May 6, 2017
- Posts
- 847
Well I am not sure that is true. I think the wider tail would be more prone to skidding, because if you don't finish the turn as much across the hill that wider tail is not going to like it.
More shape in the tip/fore-body makes carving easier by merely tipping the ski up. I don't think this holds true of a wider tail . More taper angle = more versatile turn shape. Less taper angle forces the skier into a more particular turn shape and the result of not following that shape is........ skidding the tail in turn completion.
In my experience, a wider tail makes it easier to hang onto a carve as forces build at the end of the turn, but I'm not racing anyone, just having fun.
Thread Starter
TS
I'm not sure that's true either, which is why I asked
- Joined
- May 6, 2017
- Posts
- 847
I don't think it makes it easier, I think it forces you to hang on to the carve.l
- Joined
- May 6, 2017
- Posts
- 847
I was being polite....In know it's not true! it's all about the tip of the ski drawing you into the turn when the ski is tipped, not the shape of the tail, unless of course you are riding the tails!
Thread Starter
TS
Well I’ve been known to make mistakes and get back, so in that sense of it helps continue a turn during a mistake I see that as being more forgiving. Maybe user-friendly isn’t the right term.
If I’m executing well, of course it’s about releasing the turn into a retraction transition, so in that case I agree with you that it shouldn’t really make much difference, and more tail shape could be slower.
If I’m executing well, of course it’s about releasing the turn into a retraction transition, so in that case I agree with you that it shouldn’t really make much difference, and more tail shape could be slower.
It's still easy to release the body from the carve and swap edges. I guess it depends on what you want to do. I usually want to carve arc-2-arc, with instant transitions between carves.
- Joined
- May 6, 2017
- Posts
- 847
Exactly, that is why race skis particularly slaloms but also GS, SG & DH have a narrower tail profile then tip dimension by quite a bit
For example the Atomic FIS S9 in a 165 has a tail 16mm narrower then the tip. My SG's are 11MM narrower in the tail then tip.
There were some skis of yore that had equal tail and tip dimensions. Fischer RCR comes to mind. They called it dual sidecut. No versatility in turn shape. The side cut from the tip to waist was equal to the side cut from waist to tail. It only liked one turn shape. Atomic SL9.12, miserable little ski. Tail was too wide. If you were not right on the turn shape it liked, it almost wagged like a ski skate (snowblade, ski blade or whatever).
Last edited:
yup, which effectively slows you in a race course. Past the apex of the turn the pressure should be reducing as you start to transition to the new ski for the next turn. Basically pressure below the apex is fighting gravity....
.Watch MS in previous years in a slalom course (when she was seconds ahead of the rest), preferably size by side with some of the other leading women. Basically she ditches completion of the old turn somewhere between 50-75% and is already on the new ski while the other women are still completing the turn and going across rather than down the hill
Thread Starter
TS
This is something I know, but don't fully understand, if that makes sense. A skier has to get across the fall line by the amount of the next gate offset, so how does she accomplish that above the fall line, when by definition the ski direction is away from the next gate? I mean can you really get enough lateral momentum built in your turn above the fall line, so that by the time you cross the fall line, your center of mass is predetermined to be displaced laterally enough to make the next gate? Maybe that's not how it works, but executing this concept of the really early release is somewhat of a magic bullet that every racer needs to understand. If you can offer any insights or tips I'd love to learn more about the secret to actually accomplishing this.
Some discussions don’t work well over the internet and this is one of them. A few random thoughts:
- As @JTurner asked, yes, a ski with a relatively wider tail is more friendly in that it will be more forgiving vis a vis weight placement —you can still turn from the back seat. If the only part of your ski with shape is the tip, you have to be there all the time to turn. Yes, this same characteristic can lock you into a turn shape and make the ski slower in a course, but this also comes down to skier skill. A good skier will be able to fluidly adjust line, turn placement and turn shape, moving forward to initiate the turn and aft to unwind the ski and accelerate. Yes, there are very few skiers who can do this consistently.
- When you turn, you flex the skis. This builds a lot of power in the ski. We’ll call it potential energy, because the power is built and stored. A good skier will build that potential energy in the upper two thirds of the turn and convert it into kinetic energy in the bottom third to carry them through the transition. The higher in the turn you have max edge angle, the sooner you will be able to convert the energy into motion. A bad skier (most of us) will hold the power-building phase until we are perpendicular to the fall line and release the kinetic energy at the bottom of the turn, effectively pushing us up the hill. If you don’t understand how much potential energy is stored in the system, search “World Cup crashes” in YouTube. When skiers get flipped on their heads in slalom, that’s potential energy being converted to kinetic energy in an uncontrolled direction. It can hurt. A lot.
- I think it was @mike_m who started a post in ski school about what he learned at a camp in NZ. That gets into how this is accomplished with technique in pretty granular detail. The only thing I would clarify in his post is that it is written from the POV of ski instructors who are trying to control speed with their technique rather than racers who are trying to maximize speed through technique and control it through timing and line placement.
- Understand that timing and tactics are two separate things. Timing is when you start and end a turn and tactics is where you start and end a turn. Both are fluid, however, one mistake I see new racers make often is starting a turn too early. I would define “starting” as when the new edges are engaged with pressure and “early” as before you get to the rise line. Again, this is fluid and early isn’t always bad, but it has implications later in the turn. Also keep in mind that as speeds increase you need to start relatively earlier because you are covering more ground. Tactics is where you begin and end the turn in terms of height. I would say turn placement is a factor of tactics and turn shape is more a factor of timing, but also kind of its own thing. Generally when most coaches say to turn early, really what they mean is turn higher, but delay the turn until the rise line. You can see good examples of this in auto racing, especially on road courses like hill climbs and point to point rally racing. Don’t watch F1, there is too much grip making this hard to see. You’ve heard “in slow, out fast” right? What that means is the back half of the corner is more important than the front half. More specifically, if you go barreling into a corner and come out on a bad line or even worse, have to scrub speed to make the turn, you’re slow. If you control the front half of the corner and exit with speed and good poisiton, you are fast. In ski racing, people tend to put far too much emphasis on being fast into a turn or trying to carry speed into a turn, when what really matters is where are skis are and where they are pointing when you exit the turn. The second part of tactics is extrapolating this several turns down the hill. Let’s say you have a hairpin going into a pitch set with rhythm and then a long flat to the finish. How you exit the hairpin is going to directly affect the speed you carry onto the flat. Better to be conservative, go slow into the pitch and hold your speed onto the flat than to ski the hairpin aggressively, go flying into the pitch and gradually scrub speed and get slightly later each turn, barely holding it together and have no speed when you get to the flat.
- If you want a master class in what this all looks like, watch videos of Ester Ledecka in the PGS at the Olympics. She isn’t technically better on a board than everyone else, she is tactically smarter. There is a lot that happens on skis that can obscure what I’m trying to explain. On a snowboard it is much easier to see.
- As @JTurner asked, yes, a ski with a relatively wider tail is more friendly in that it will be more forgiving vis a vis weight placement —you can still turn from the back seat. If the only part of your ski with shape is the tip, you have to be there all the time to turn. Yes, this same characteristic can lock you into a turn shape and make the ski slower in a course, but this also comes down to skier skill. A good skier will be able to fluidly adjust line, turn placement and turn shape, moving forward to initiate the turn and aft to unwind the ski and accelerate. Yes, there are very few skiers who can do this consistently.
- When you turn, you flex the skis. This builds a lot of power in the ski. We’ll call it potential energy, because the power is built and stored. A good skier will build that potential energy in the upper two thirds of the turn and convert it into kinetic energy in the bottom third to carry them through the transition. The higher in the turn you have max edge angle, the sooner you will be able to convert the energy into motion. A bad skier (most of us) will hold the power-building phase until we are perpendicular to the fall line and release the kinetic energy at the bottom of the turn, effectively pushing us up the hill. If you don’t understand how much potential energy is stored in the system, search “World Cup crashes” in YouTube. When skiers get flipped on their heads in slalom, that’s potential energy being converted to kinetic energy in an uncontrolled direction. It can hurt. A lot.
- I think it was @mike_m who started a post in ski school about what he learned at a camp in NZ. That gets into how this is accomplished with technique in pretty granular detail. The only thing I would clarify in his post is that it is written from the POV of ski instructors who are trying to control speed with their technique rather than racers who are trying to maximize speed through technique and control it through timing and line placement.
- Understand that timing and tactics are two separate things. Timing is when you start and end a turn and tactics is where you start and end a turn. Both are fluid, however, one mistake I see new racers make often is starting a turn too early. I would define “starting” as when the new edges are engaged with pressure and “early” as before you get to the rise line. Again, this is fluid and early isn’t always bad, but it has implications later in the turn. Also keep in mind that as speeds increase you need to start relatively earlier because you are covering more ground. Tactics is where you begin and end the turn in terms of height. I would say turn placement is a factor of tactics and turn shape is more a factor of timing, but also kind of its own thing. Generally when most coaches say to turn early, really what they mean is turn higher, but delay the turn until the rise line. You can see good examples of this in auto racing, especially on road courses like hill climbs and point to point rally racing. Don’t watch F1, there is too much grip making this hard to see. You’ve heard “in slow, out fast” right? What that means is the back half of the corner is more important than the front half. More specifically, if you go barreling into a corner and come out on a bad line or even worse, have to scrub speed to make the turn, you’re slow. If you control the front half of the corner and exit with speed and good poisiton, you are fast. In ski racing, people tend to put far too much emphasis on being fast into a turn or trying to carry speed into a turn, when what really matters is where are skis are and where they are pointing when you exit the turn. The second part of tactics is extrapolating this several turns down the hill. Let’s say you have a hairpin going into a pitch set with rhythm and then a long flat to the finish. How you exit the hairpin is going to directly affect the speed you carry onto the flat. Better to be conservative, go slow into the pitch and hold your speed onto the flat than to ski the hairpin aggressively, go flying into the pitch and gradually scrub speed and get slightly later each turn, barely holding it together and have no speed when you get to the flat.
- If you want a master class in what this all looks like, watch videos of Ester Ledecka in the PGS at the Olympics. She isn’t technically better on a board than everyone else, she is tactically smarter. There is a lot that happens on skis that can obscure what I’m trying to explain. On a snowboard it is much easier to see.