Olympics

[Ilivetoski]

@unksskis I was having a somewhat similar conversation the other day. Why is skiing so expensive? why are the skis over 1k? why are boats 50k? why is skiing 1 event $160 in nationals? $90 in regionals? Look what do other sports such as basketball and football have over skiing? People. People to buy all this equipment. Basketball has 1000x more people participating then waterskiing. So what does this do? If I am selling something, and I have a market with 10 million people, do I have to charge $1000 per whatever it is that I am selling? No (assuming it does not cost that much to make). I can charge $100 and still make a huge profit. In skiing, we have a small market. Now take into consideration multiple ski/boat companies. Not everyone skis on a Radar the way most athletes choose Nike. So now we have an already small market, cut up for multiple ski companies. Now instead of selling thousands and thousands of units like Nike, Radar may sell 1 thousand or 2 thousand skis. Say they sell 2000 at an average price of $525 (added up market price and that is what I got as an average). Thats only $1,050,000, for a company that has to pay for ski molds, R&D for those molds, give something to the pro team, donate to pro tournments, and pay its employees, that is not much money at all. Same thing with USAWS. They cannot function off of $20 from 100,000 people. It just is not enough money. Also, you say that you disagree with the motor part of what I said earlier. Look at it this way. Typically in class rooms cell phones are not allowed to be used correct? Well if a teacher tells billy that he is allowed to text, arent all the other kids going to say "wait a minuite, I wanna text in class". Thats exactly what will happen with other sports that use motors/engines. Also we are hiding on private lakes!! People dont have access to these!! If you go to the town my lake is located in, and asked 10 people "do you know where stillwater lake is" they would say no. All 10 of them. If I go to a public lake and ask people "do you know where stillwater lake is" they would all say no. When I skied on public water, I had people come up to me when I was done skiing and ask "hey, can you teach me how to go around those buoys like you just did" with us at private lakes we are keeping the sport contained. Many of the lakes are hidden, literally! If you drive past every private lake in ky only 1 is visable from the highway. The others are back in farms. Back to what I said about engines and people complaining like kdis in school, if wakeboarding gets accepted as an Olympic sport, are we not all gonna cry about it and say "thats not fair, we use a boat, the boat tows us, therefore waterskiing should be an Olympic sport" YES WE ARE. No one here would say "ok, wakeboarding is but skiing isnt thats ok with us we wont say anything". Waterskiiers would say that we want to be recognized as well.

[cwillygood]

x games would be way cooler, i really dont think it would be that big of a deal to have it in the olympics, theres too many variables with the boat, drivers, speed, idk x games jumping would be much better

 

 

and to some of the sports being boring i would agree

[Leopold]

Of course Keirin is the example to be taken. We all know that the motorcycle is not the tow vehicle in Keirin but there is an engine involved in the sport and the performance of the engine is not a comparative advantage between competitors, same in waterski. That's the thing.

And I also think slalom skiing is as much spectator sport as slalom alpine skiing.

 

Anyway we lost the train of the olympics in 2004. We made a big effort to be included but... so I think we can not lose time and resources again and again with this issue.

[Roger]

Of course Keirin is NOT the example to be taken. The participants do NOT use the power of the motorcyle, skiers USE the power of the boat.

[Leopold]

In fact they use the power of the derny, it's quite important to reduce the wind drag so forefront rider does not exhaust himself due to wind resistance.

I also see similarities with the driving of the derny, the driver has to be very consistent with the speeds and direction same as waterski.

But, again, the most important thing is that the power of the derny / boat is the same for all the participants.

 

But of course there are differences, motorcycles have wheels and boats propellers...

[ForrestGump]

@Mattp I do know that MC has had an ongoing discussion with a waterskier about helping with funding to build a ski/wakeboard lake and motocross track. Perfect place for an awesome Xgames inclusive of slalom, jumping, wakeboarding, etc. Talk is they've budgeted 2013 dollars for it.

 

That said...... I don't give a crap about waterskiing being in the olympics. USAWS wasted 10 years and a lot of our money with that joke. Time to move on.

[ToddL]

I wonder how much money was redirected toward the Olympic effort. What if all of that money and time and people effort was invested in growing the sport locally, subsidizing INT and GR etc. Just wondering...

[MattP]

@ShaneH yes I know about the project. I'm pretty anothe one like that has already been built the one I heard of was not in LA though.. They really don't move the XGames any more.

[unksskis]

@ilivetoski good points with the money, but my point was similar to @ToddL 's, money was likely directed toward the Olympic effort, and still is, and that cost has to be passed down. Skiing being in the Olympics does not effect me, and I don't really care, yet my money has been/is being used for it's initiative, and the cost keeps increasing. Not sure we're on the same page. Also, I believe wakeboarding will make it into the Olympics as a cable or System 2.0, not boat sport. Yes there is a motor there, but that motor is more universally available and used, less costly, and really just an aspect of the course. Skiing can then say they deserve it too, and they do, although being pulled via cable. Then there is the point of the attraction and spectator aspect that double flips and spins brings, which skiing does not. Add to that the success of snowboarding, so much success that they expedited slopestyle into the next Olympics faster than a sport is normally allowed in. I was being sarcastic regarding us not hiding on private lakes and keeping away from society, because as you pointed out, that is what skiers have done.

[sgilbert]

Farmers now have tractors and combines that can essentially drive themselves (via GPS). Driverless cars have also navigated hundreds of miles of the most challenging roads in the U.S. (via GPS). Thus, I'm not sure why a boat can't be engineered in a similar manner to maintain a straight line down a ski course (w/o a driver's hands on the wheel). However, like a commercial aircraft (on auto-pilot), you would still want a pilot (driver) ready to take over in the event of an emergency.

[cwillygood]

i agree with @sgilbert im sure with all the things built in the olympic park they could figure out a boat the ran on a track or something to stay perfectly down the middle

 

we have always thought of a pilon like the ones in the boat that ran on a track at the exact speed, no wake, it would be cool

[MattP]

It can be done with GPS easy... It's almost impossible at this time to have it drive with the same Rythm as a human driver. This is one reason why the track idea is flawed. We as skiers would be fighting even more than we are now with ZO.

[Phil2360]

1972, Munich was when it was a demo sport.

My old ski mate & ex land-lord Bruce Cockburn competed there.

His brother Graeme was there too.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_skiing_at_the_1972_Summer_Olympics

 

My comment on the Olympics....

We haven't won a lot of Gold medals, but we've certainly replayed the a lot to make up!

 

[otisg]

Water Skiing was one of two demonstration sports at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

 

Here are the results://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_skiing_at_the_1972_Summer_Olympics

[Glydon]

@sunvalleylaw you have made the best argument on here in both your posts ... in a recent argument last week (I think I won) I stated that the boat in waterski events only provides the propulsion to the athlete, no differently than gravity does in any "downhill" sport , ski-ing , snowboarding , bob sleigh , luge , kayaking , even diving, I could go on but everyone gets the idea. With the new timing systems I feel that now is the time for the sport to be revisited.

 

[Wish]

@Glydon just playing the flip side of the coin for discussion purposes but gravity never changes. There is still the driver (human element) and steering (still a variable). I cant think of another sport in the Olympics that requires another human to control the propulsion device for the athlete.

[Laz]

My: $0.02.

 

I want WS in the Olympics so I get less confusion and less resistance when I put a slalom course in the far corner of a public lake.

 

The effect of the driver on skiing is minuscule compared to the complete fixing of boxing and *gag* synchronized swimming.

 

The number of people who have ever tried skiing (like I first did when I was 12) is way higher than many of the sports in the Olympics (such as Judo, which I used to compete in nationally and is in the Olympics).

 

WS in the Olympics would shift the whole sport. More would try it for the first time, more would try a slalom course, more would join a club, more would compete and more would buy expensive skis and boats.