Spoiler: PyeongChang 2018 Olympics

[Karen_skier2.0]

@Muleski do you think things have improved since Marolt left?

 

[Dwight]

CAN’s Cassie Sharpe wins gold in women’s freeski halfpipe, FRA’s Marie Martinod takes silver, USA’s Brita Sigourney gets bronze

 

[Ohioskier]

CAN’s Cassie Sharpe wins gold in women’s freeski halfpipe, FRA’s Marie Martinod takes silver, USA’s Brita Sigourney gets bronze

Hopefully we had better competition than the previous video from the girl from Oakland California that is on Hungary ski team lol

 

[Muleski]

@Muleski do you think things have improved since Marolt left?

I do in some respects. My interest and focus is on alpine racing, and I'm not on top of the specifics of the other disciplines.

I'm frustrated with the continued "funding gap", and the demands we placed on athletes there. I'm frustrated by the annual anxiety over making criteria and being named to the team. At times I think the criteria is too objective and the athletes are always on edge about world rankings. We seem to expect a lot and wash many out early. Particularly when I track the careers of many European skiers.

I think that progress has been made in what was a deplorable development program under Marolt. I was glad to see the US Team academy cease and less emphasis on the NGT, and USST D team. I think we need a D team type group for speed skiers good enough to be on the Europa Cup, and I don't know that it needs to be a named group/team. I feel that what Chip Knight is doing makes sense. Get strong people to coordinate efforts in each region, develop projects, and work collaboratively. The small clubs will scream to some degree but the skiers are coming from larger well resourced clubs and academies. We seem to have an awful lot of talented kids, and now we are exposing them to a lot of racing in Europe, where they do well. They younger pipeline, say ages 22 and younger seems better.

Now do USST personnel have much to do with that? Very few. No coaches.

On the con side, We seem to have fallen into the old ways of letting athletes hang on as long as they want. Something seems wrong about that, in terms of how you allocate resources. We have a huge gap with birth years with no athletes. That is a hangover from the Marolt years. I think all you can do is build from the young up. It takes years. And I can get impatient..

I feel that Tiger Shaw gives it his all, is a great guy, and does his absolute best. Is he the right guy, and a turnaround guy? Has enough happened, fast enough? Has he grown the headcount and overhead too much with non essential jobs? They keep raising more money and increasing budget. The funding gap remains and our coaches are not well paid. A move to the USST normally involves a pay decrease.

The coaching staff works hard, real hard. Good people. But in any organization sometimes you get stale and new need new blood. From Alpine Program directors on down. Over the years we've flipped back and forth between hiring the best in the world and hiring a huge number of USST alums. It seems like it needs change. New approaches. Mikaela is on her own program, LV is as well along with Ligety. How do we handle that?

Nobody would suggest that the mother of our top athlete would ever tell Marolt what to do. She is half jokingly called the most powerful person in US skiing. I don't like it. I hope it goes away.

So, is it better post Bill Marolt? Hard to say. We still have the focus on big guns. "Best in the World", as measured by Olympic Medals. I HATE IT. It is not how the rest of the alpine works measures success.

On top of that, even using that measure, we have fallen. We are not as strong, even at the top as we have been. It's MS, and fingers crossed, LV. Hopefully one more LV year.

I think we got a bit carried away with MS. As tremendous as she is, it's easy to make a case for the "mikaela phenomenon" having had a steep price and trade-off for all of the success.

So....I think this needs a lot of work. A lot of strategic work. And new eyes, new perspective and new energy. Which takes time.

I think we were in the tank in a deep slide at the end of the Marolt era. My sense is that Tiger stopped that. Righted the ship to a large degree. But is it turned around and headed in the right direction as best it can? I don't think so.

I hear a ton of what sound like justifications and excuses. We don't understand "how complex this is." Or how "challenging raising the money is..."

It may not be easy. It is doable. I think it's time for more change. And I suspect that it means turning over a lot of people.

Just my $.02.......

 

[Tricia]

Competitors show emotion different ways. Canadians are some of the politest people in the world, and will apologize for not being more polite. I was at a party where a polite Canadian skier flung herself belly first on the dance floor and took a few laps porpoising around like a beached dolphin. A coach remarked "yes you can see, she has the fire, and will be a world champion one day". She never won that, but did get an Olympic medal. And apologized for clearing the dance floor.

HAHA, I was thinking.....I come from northern Michigan where we continually say -
I'm sorry...
After you...

Faivre wasn't disrespecting anybody who medaled! He was upset as HIS OWN SKIING. And that is 100% fair game.

This!

So....my NBC affiliate just reported this as breaking big news:

"Mikaela Shiffrin has JUST ANNOUNCED that she will not be competing in the downhill ski racing event, LEAVING AMERICAN LINDSEY VONN as the favorite!"

Wow...no kidding! Who knew? My hunch is that this week, on that course, there could have been a huge margin between them. We will never know. I suspect that MS is out for many reasons.
She should just shut this event down. Next thing...she will get sick and potentially have in linger.
Not her games. 2022 will be better. Win the SL and GS. Drop the five events.

But love the press! I bet LV is SO relieved to not have to face MS in the DH! HaHa!

Ahh i was joking. Not exactly "breaking news"!

Feeling more like I need to explain every single thing.

I read it from SkiRacing.com today and was going to post it before I took my nap but....well, I napped.
https://www.skiracing.com/stories/shiffrin-drops-downhill-as-alpine-combined-schedule-changed

Think I wasn't clear enough....apologize.

Are you part Canadian?

No apology needed, at least not for me.

What he said. ^^^

 

[Karen_skier2.0]

I'm frustrated with the continued "funding gap", and the demands we placed on athletes there.

This kills me--I feel like it hasn't changed in the last 30 years. Welcome to the team, now send us a check! When you look at these kids RallyMe and GoFundMe pages, the majority of their expenses are for transportation. All this time and we cannot get an airline sponsor outside of Olympic years?

So, is it better post Bill Marolt? Hard to say. We still have the focus on big guns. "Best in the World", as measured by Olympic Medals. I HATE IT. It is not how the rest of the alpine works measures success.

Exactly. The US is too focused on medals. (This is ironic in a culture that likes to give out participation trophies.)

I am bummed that freestyle skiing (moguls/aerials) didn't take home any medals; however, I'm not disappointed in their performances. There were some huge breakthroughs by new athletes, but none of it made it to primetime--even with incredible back stories. Jon Lillis led aerial qualifications after overcoming losing his brother just 3 months ago. Isn't this a made-for-TV moment? And Casey Andringa slept in a camper all summer with his brother to train at the water ramps. He wasn't even on the US team coming into the season and makes it to the finals and goes for broke in his final mogul run. If this stuff doesn't make it to primetime, how are we ever going to get sponsors for our sports?

I remember in 1998 when 3 freestyle athletes were left off of the Olympic team since USST didn't want to send anyone without "medal potential". So, being in the top 10 wasn't enough--they were regularly placing 4th-7th. They had not medaled in that season, but had in the previous season. In fact, one of them placed 2nd in Breckenridge the week of the arbitration hearings. How's that for lack of medal potential? One of the women was my best friend growing up and she had been assured by the coaches that she was on the team. She kept doing triples to push the sport instead of staying conservative with doubles to maximize points going into the Olympics. Fortunately, the lawsuit was settled during arbitration and the athletes were added to the team. They may not have medaled at the games, but that had earned their right to be there. It's not like we were sending an "Eddie the Eagle" to the games. These were world class athletes! (steps off soapbox)

 

[Muleski]

There, as I recall was one year when on the alpine side, the original plan had such stupidly high Olympic qualification criteria that we would have skied about two in each event instead of the normal four. It somehow was worked through but it had the wrong athletes on edge for no good reason. I say bring a full team and let people experience it early.

The funding gap. It's embarrassing when the USST takes great pride in helping the athletes set up their Rally Me accounts. Seriously?

On the alpine side we have had a number of WC tech races where the majority of the US skiers entered are not on the Team. Good enough to be starting on the top 50 { or much lower} but not good enough to be on the team? It just looks foolish.

Meanwhile we had some hangers on. When they are telling friends that they would retire "but they can't afford to" something is wrong. And needs to be thought through and cleaned up.

I do think things are better in many areas. The foundation of the house has been getting a lot of work.

 

[Karen_skier2.0]

IMO, it appears that those who end up bringing in their own coaches and resources are the only ones that excel to the "best in the world" status. LV, MS & Bode Miller have always had their own team.

Four years ago, I remember hearing that the freestylers didn't have a ski tech and prepped their own skis. I hope that has changed.

SIDE NOTE:

BREAKING: Due to incoming weather, the women's Olympic snowboard big air has moved to Thursday morning at 9:30am Korea Time.

(in the states, that's Wednesday night at 7:30pm ET.)

 

[Karen_skier2.0]

Does anyone know what the black stuff is in landing area of the aerials?

This stuff looks real. And, hopefully, deep and soft.

 

[Primoz]

I don't know what to say about this..

That's what I'm saying forever already... It's simply not fair this is allowed. I know once upon a time it was important to take part on Olympics, but now, times are different and such people have no place to be around there. With enough money and proper passport (enough money buys it for you), you can brag around you were competing at Olympics, while someone, who is top 10 on World will never have chance to see Olympics except to watch it on TV, as there's 4 his compatriots who are better then him.
While FIS has some rules and limits who can compete, these limits are so low, I can get through them today, in xc in alpine, and obviously also in freestyle.

 

[newfydog]

Michelle Gisin came over to the broadcast area wanting to meet Bode Miller. He offered some insight, and she turned in the second fastest training run.

 

[Franzz]

Despite her non showing in tomorrows downhill MS was trailing LV very close, yep its just training..

OFFICIAL RESULTS - THIRD TRAINING (More details here »)
Rank Bib Name Tot. Time Diff. Time
1 18 SIEBENHOFER Ramona 1:40.67
2 19 GISIN Michelle 1:40.87
3 6 FANCHINI Nadia 1:40.88
4 1 VONN Lindsey 1:40.96
5 3 SHIFFRIN Mikaela 1:41.01
6 12 MOWINCKEL Ragnhild 1:41.02
7 7 GUT Lara 1:41.15

 

[Seldomski]

Despite her non showing in tomorrows downhill MS was trailing LV very close, yep its just training..

OFFICIAL RESULTS - THIRD TRAINING (More details here »)
Rank Bib Name Tot. Time Diff. Time
1 18 SIEBENHOFER Ramona 1:40.67
2 19 GISIN Michelle 1:40.87
3 6 FANCHINI Nadia 1:40.88
4 1 VONN Lindsey 1:40.96
5 3 SHIFFRIN Mikaela 1:41.01
6 12 MOWINCKEL Ragnhild 1:41.02
7 7 GUT Lara 1:41.15

MS followed LV tracks which cut off one of the gates in the run. Also, LV stood up near the end to slow down. MS tucked the whole run. Idk if the other top runs cheated on the line taken or not.

I don't think MS had a realistic chance of medaling in the DH. Combined, she has a chance.

 

[Franzz]

I don't think MS had a realistic chance of medaling in the DH.

That ^^will never know, its just training;.

 

[scott43]

Betcha MS would have kicked Swaney''s ass in the half pipe...

 

[Tom K.]

Betcha MS would have kicked Swaney''s ass in the half pipe...

I could have done that. Even if I couldn't do a proper "grab", I could at least reach down and brush some snow off one of my skis!

 

[Dwight]

Ah, Like I always tell everyone, I can always jump and go down steeps. It's the landings, I have a hard time with.

 

[4ster]

Michelle Gisin came over to the broadcast area wanting to meet Bode Miller. He offered some insight, and she turned in the second fastest training run.

Too bad we can't get Bode to do some coaching.

MS followed LV tracks which cut off one of the gates in the run. Also, LV stood up near the end to slow down. MS tucked the whole run. Idk if the other top runs cheated on the line taken or not.

I don't think MS had a realistic chance of medaling in the DH. Combined, she has a chance.

Of course she had a realistic chance! She arguably is technically the best skier in the world, a fierce competitor, is 22yo. & probably has really fast skis. but...

That ^^will never know, its just training;.

I imagine she won't take huge risk in the DH portion of the combined but hopefully it will tell us something about what she has learned in the training runs

 

[Dwight]

Men's halfpipe, all 4 US guys qualified.

 

[Ohioskier]

Betcha MS would have kicked Swaney''s ass in the half pipe...

I’m gonna train my 5 year old to do that run so by next olympics she can qualify and be youngest Olympic skier ever lol