I'm not willing to watch that talk again after being there for the original thing. It's too long. But I just took a look at my notes. Here are some things I wrote down.
--75% of sales last season were "fat" skis. Manufacturers depend on the resulting revenue.
--What's "fat" is not concretely defined. But anything under 80 at the waist would not be considered "fat."
--Most recreational skiers ski 8 days a season, on groomers.
--Manufacturers tend to market fat skis to recreational skiers as all-mountain do-it-all skis.
--PSIA exam candidates who scored the best were on skis measuring 80 and lower at the waist.
The research on how fat skis impact the skier's movements was done well. The researchers put a device on Deb Armstrong's feet/boots that measures what the boot/ski is doing edge-wise and how the pressure moves through each turn and so on. Deb skied the same set of gates on the same run with three different skis having three different waist widths, and as she skied the device recorded what the skis did. They got Deb Armstrong to do the skiing because her turns are extremely consistent. That meant that any ski performance variations through the course as the skis were changed would be due to the ski differences. I did not write down the ski models and don't remember if the speaker told us about that, but it was obvious that the study was designed to minimize the impact of any other factors besides waist width.
In post #12
@Mike King discussed some of the conclusions of the researchers. Given the precision of the study, I'm willing to trust their conclusions.
During the Q&A, I asked the speaker if getting this paper published was possible, given the needs of manufacturers who advertise in most ski magazines. I did not get a straight answer, but the audience chuckled.
@Mike King, did you listen to the very end and was that question on the video?