What if they had a party and no one came

[lpskier]

Two rounds of a four round tournament in the books at LaPoint Ski Park today. While there was lots of good skiing and great scores, including the pending Lebanese Women's National Record (Paula Sleiman, 1@55k/-32) (no, not April Fools), no one took advantage of the new ZBS rules. We offered 58k max for men and 55k max for women, yet no one skied above the traditional age group speed. No one shortened at below traditional age group max either. Two more rounds to go tomorrow.

[eleeski]

The Imperial SDSU College tournament this weekend was one of the first with the new little buoy rule. It was great. Everyone was stoked. Some fine tuning is in order but this was an excellent rule change.

 

Also, a couple kids took advantage of the ZBS rule to get the headwind pass they wanted. The ZBS rule is working here.

 

Interesting that I wasn't able to ski Alumni in M6. Maybe I'm level 10 there. I'm stoked to be MM regardless. Maybe I should have actually finished the registration process to be able to comment intelligently on the level 10 rule. I got food poisoning along with a huge group of the skiers there and didn't ski. It's the old ones who die in these outbreaks - and I'm the oldest one here. @Horton you didn't have to poison all those kids to get to me.

 

Anyhow, all the new rules got good use today here. Didn't ruin anything for any skiers but made things more fun. Thanks to Richelle, Jeff Surdej, Jeff Rush and the rest who were willing to try some fun changes. And not force new conditions on those who chose not to take advantage of the opportunity.

 

@lpskier Wasn't allowing 4 rounds a new rule?

 

Eric

[lpskier]

@eleeski Yes.

[Horton]

@eleeski the poison was not for the kids. It was all for you.

[lpskier]

Tournament finished. No ZBS takers. Allie Nicholson ran 1@39 and Freddie Winter ran 1@43 though.

[John Brooks]

I'm glad to see ZBS in place and last year saw several kids take advantage of it. My experience is that the design is more directed toward less experienced skiers and giving them the opportunity to become more involved in tournament skiing. It sounds like @lpskier that the crowd there was more on the higher experienced end and I would be surprised in those type events to see it used. Thanks for the update.

[MISkier]

I am surprised that the option was not selected, given all the discussion about how everyone would be forced to ski above age division max speed to be competitive.

[lpskier]

@John Brooks Actually, we had one young girl skiing her first tournament. I think she topped out at 23 mph long line.

[MISkier]

@Than_Bogan, which part of my post did you disagree with? That I was surprised or that there was discussion about everyone being forced above age division max to be competitive?

[Than_Bogan]

It is not at all surprising that folks are not skiing 36, and that is completely consistent with the view that top-top level skiers would typically get more buoys at 36.

 

The reason is that the very top level skiers are interested in competing at Regionals, Nationals, and Big Dawg. As soon as they made it that you could not ski above existing age division speeds in those tournaments, then there was no reason that any such skier would spend any time practicing or competing at 36.

[MISkier]

Got it. In that scenario, it seems we may never know the true effect of the rule.