Worlds Scores Malaysia

[TravisNW]

Is there cash prize for worlds?

[Drago]

So, I just had a few Grape Nehis, so I may regret this,but:

Ryan Dodd is the Athlete Representative of the IWWF! Did he say anything when this site won the bid?? (2 years ago?, 4 years ago?) it should be where successful tournaments have happened before.

THE ATHLETES NEED TO GET THEIR STUFF TOGETHER AND BE PROACTIVE AND BE PART OF THE SOLUTION. Make sure you have a say in site selection. Establish criteria besides money, including safety and public access. Is Malaysia gonna grow the viewership, or are they just sport-washing as they do with F1, bike racing, etc?Their's no prize money, so why not have it at Lake Hancock? Decide on an effective gate vs show/missed gate/ski-inside-the-buoy-and-fake-it penalty. Decide if you are trying to set a World Record every weekend or you are there to show Mano-e-mono competition. If you don't want the old guys making your decisions, then actually get involved.

Jiminey Christmas, the old pro tours were mostly class F tournaments. Almost everyone that works an alpine World Cup is a volunteer that sleeps on a floor and gets an ugly jacket for 4 day's work. Is it necessary to have swanky hotels and lobster for the officials?

........

And congrats to Canada:)

[ScottScott]

So we have a site with dangerous conditions holding a major event.... Is there more the organizers of the event could have done to minimize these conditions, or is it just inherent to that site? Is the blame here to be directed toward the event organizers, or the IWWF for choosing to hold this event at this venue?

[andjules]

I think we're seeing built up frustration from the skiers for the 2nd World's in a row in a major city with 2nd rate conditions but where no spectators showed up. They're speaking out because they don't want the IWWF to keep doing this, and that's a fair position.

 

But I don't believe everything I've heard about 'dangerous' conditions. I'm happy to be corrected but while there were three injuries (Luca Spinelli, Joel Howley and Jack Critchley), the chop and backwash weren't out of the ordinary for a metro-site tournament (ie not at a man-made ski lake).

 

These skiers happily book their tickets to Moomba every spring and ski on conditions that produce scores as low or lower than this tournament. But they ski in front of thousands of spectators. If they'd been skiing in front of thousands in Paris (2017) or Malaysia (2019), I suspect we wouldn't be talking about 'dangerous' backwash and chop. If the IWWF wants $250k and to host in a big city, they're going to have to help the organizers promote and draw a real crowd.

[UWSkier]

Skiing is an outdoor sport. Water moves sometimes. Some lakes are better than others. Complaining about it publicly after the fact makes you look like a prima donna. Attacking people who call you out makes you look like a sourpuss.

 

They don't cancel motorcycle races if it's raining. They don't stop downhill ski races when the sun turns parts of the course to mush for skiers later in the day.

 

Until we have domed indoor stadium lakes, this argument is pretty dumb on both sides (with one side obviously handling it way worse).

[disland]

The worst thing about this whole issue is that no one seems to even know what the process is to select worlds sites.

[lottawatta]

The process to bid on worlds is available on the iwwf website (iwwf.sport). Basically, you declare your intent to bid by contacting the iwwf pres and secretary general and chairman of the sport discipline council. They return to you a "list of obligations" and let you know the sanction fee (which I understand changes based on a number of variables). Then you send in an application with a portion of the sanction fee up front and they vote. Having been involved in a world championships in another iwwf discipline, I have first hand info on the process and costs involved. Although the sanction fee is huge, the biggest cost may be the fact that IWWF expects accommodations, full board, transportation for a number of dignitaries (and their spouses) way beyond those required to judge/score/drive. There are meetings, receptions, and banquets, which require space, food, etc. The costs for one of these events is WAY BEYOND what anyone realizes. That is why you don't see the IWWF 3 event worlds in the US. No one is crazy enough to do it. The requirements are so far beyond what it takes to have a RC tournament site and a decent hotel, no one wants to fool with it. It takes HUGE local support (city, convention / visitors bureau, etc.) , a HUGE crew of the local club, etc. to pull one of these off. I participated in organizing the one I did in an effort to build up to hosting an elite 3 event Worlds. But after what we went through, it would be pretty difficult to get me to want to organize another. A guess on my part, would be that the LOC of this years worlds would have had to spend north of $350k to do what they did.

 

I don't have first hand knowledge, but I have heard the Putrajaya LOC made significant improvements to the site including breakwater and bank enhancement to improve conditions over previous world cup events held there. While I don't agree with the organizer's efforts to belittle the athletes who didn't like the conditions, I sympathize with his frustrations. Working his arse off for years to organize this and have the athletes who won run their mouth about poor conditions would piss me off to no end. 75 or more % of the time, effort, and money associated with this event was spent on things not directly associated with putting bouys and a jump in the water. I am sure the hospitality for the athletes, families, officials, world council, and dignitaries, was world class even if the water conditions may not have been. Anyone who has been to a world championships would have to admit, water conditions are only one part of the overall World's experience. For some it is a bigger part than others. It was an honor to get to that level, an honor to represent your country. Was it necessary to disparage those who put on the event to make a point to IWWF?

 

One last thing, I am so incredibly stoked for Dane Mechler. Having watched that man grow up at local tournaments, I was so happy to see him in the mix. He is living proof that hard work and sacrifice pays off.

 

 

 

[dvskier]

IWWF is a top secret organization.

[elr]

Some insight into bidding on World Championships here: https://www.ballofspray.com/forum#/discussion/17128/2018-junior-world-championships-isles-of-lake-hancock-orlando-florida-bid

[Andre]

@lottawatta Very insightful post ...but i had to give you the awesome.

[skiaddict]

Here is a small list of injured at Worlds (maybe this is why there was a "World Record" made according to Hannifah lol)

 

Giannina Boneman - Broken Elbow

Robert Pigozzi - Concussion

Jack Critchley - Dislocated Hip

Joel Howley - Broken Foot

Luca Spinelli - Broken Leg and Foot

and 3 other people that I don't remember their names.

 

I was there and it was crazy

 

Jack will be out for at least 6 months as well as Joel.

Luca had surgery will be out for a year.

Robert apparently is out of California and Malibu according to the doctors.

Giannina I doubt she will attempt to Malibu.

 

So conditions were awful.

 

AND YES THIS SPORT IS DANGEROUS BUT THE SAME WAY HE COMPARES F1 TO WATERSKI. THERES NOT 8 CRASHES PER RACE.... WHY? BECAUSE F1 ONLY DRIVES IN VENUES THAT ARE APPROVED BY REGULATION SHOWING THAT IS A SAFE CIRCUIT AND DRIVERS ARE OUT OF DANGER EVEN THOUGH MISTAKES AND CATASTROPHES CAN HAPPEN.

[thager]

Well, that answers my question! Most injuries at a single tournament I have ever heard of in my 51 years of skiing.

[Horton]

I think the site is totally unacceptable but in the case of Joel I am not sure I see how the water conditions are at fault. He laid it ALL on the line and he has a non-releaseable boot.

 

Take Joel off the tally and you still have perhaps the greatest injure tally of any one water ski tournament in history.

[gsm_peter]

Question?

Does this site usually have poor or nice conditions?

I.E. What was normal expectations?

 

Is the site very sensitive to wheather?

How bad is just a little bit of wind?

 

[Andre]

IMO,the site is one big long bern away from being great...

[MillerTime38]

@Horton 4 injuries is the biggest list of injuries in one given tournament....is there any historical data to back that up? Or is that based on your opinion? How do you know any of the other injuries were not just athletes laying on the line?

[Jody_Seal]

@millertime good question. I was at 09 worlds in Canada, prelim mens jump series 1 They ran out of ambulances and helicopters.

 

Largely in this sport their are a few idealistic people with views of what the sports premise is supposed to be.

What defines the championship playing field.

Does adverse conditions equalize or is it the roll of the dice!

What should be site criteria for any championship event?

 

The way I see it across the board our sports leaders for the most part still enjoy cronyism and are in the sport for self gratification. The sanctioning bodys have failed from our own state on up to iwwf, nobody is reading from the same hymn book let alone the same page.

What is the sports mission? What is the common mission statement?

 

I have said it before I will say it again: as soon as our sport (3 event waterskiing) becomes autonomous from the rest of the "toed" enities we will then be able to define direction and will have a clearer picture of its needs for success.

 

The next world 3 event tournament is the junior worlds in santa rosa beach florida 2020.

No problems there condition wise!

[MillerTime38]

@Jody_Seal unfortunately the sport of waterskiing lacks parody, under perfect conditions the same athletes will win everytime, I guess I am in the minority where I like to see grit and mental toughness decide the podium

[Horton]

@MillerTime38

 

If @skiaddict is accurate there were at least 8 major injuries. I'm taking Joel out of the calculations so 8 - 1 = 7

 

7 major injuries? I don't need historical data for that. It a ridiculous number of injuries. Some athletes in the sport ski in moderately adverse conditions but generally speaking a premise of the sport is flat water. I don't know of any elite level athlete that trains at a site with a significant amount of random rollers. It's not what we do. It is not the sport that we participate in.

[MillerTime38]

@Horton key word is n your response “If”

I also notice no name in his Bio, under name bad influence...

[Andre]

 

Pigozzi's 39.I think he hold on a bit too long after knowing he wasn't going anywhere and got whipped toward water...

[MillerTime38]

@horton who is this “we” you speak of? Athletes that train in the US? You know there is a huge world outside of your bubble

[Horton]

@MillerTime38 I'd be thrilled to see you go through the world standings list in point out the athletes that ski in adverse conditions. While you're at it you might want to pick out the few who do not train in the United States.

[MillerTime38]

@horton so the athletes who train outside the US are at a disadvantage at worlds because they choose to train outside the US, so it’s not a world championship it’s a US championship? So how is the sport to grow on a global level?

[eleeski]

Ryan's interview was nasty and unprofessional. Hanifah's response was as bad. Race to the bottom as we comment...

 

I talked with Lelani Travers about the difficulty of their sponsorship of Senior Worlds a few years back. It takes passion for the sport and a big financial risk. Nothing dirty, just a lot of up front work and money to make it happen. Sponsoring a major event is a major undertaking. Perhaps we should be thanking Malaysia instead of bitching so much.

 

ANOC games pulled out of San Diego. We (the local waterskiers) invested a lot of time (OK, hanging out with Paul Fong from IWWF and Willie Davenport from the Olympic committee was quite interesting) and money was lost (did our new jump ramp really need rebuilding?) and we backed out of working College Nationals and the Imperial tournament (hope I can get in now). Lots of wasted effort. Big events are risky.

 

@Horton you cannot "pull out" skiers from your data sets. It totally skews your point. We need more than an unfounded "greatest" injury tally and an inflammatory rant from the winner to blame conditions for the injuries. If conditions matter that much, why doesn't Bakersfield with its perfect conditions host any major tournaments?

 

My current back injury was exacerbated by a tournament deepwater start in cold water. Should we exclude skiing in cold water as unsafe?

 

Personally, my best slalom performance came in the random rollers in the course in Hawaii. I practiced for the site by doing a couple brodies in the middle of my (perfect water) course and spinning back in to deal with the bumps. Tricks and jump were later in the day when the winds picked up. My lifetime jump PB is in the 1 foot wind chop there. My trick performances are area records that still stand decades later. I loved that site! I remember at Okeheelee when a typical August windstorm came up for the top seeds in my trick event. I stood up in the whitecaps only to get beaten by the two guys after me (in the same whitecaps) one set a Nationals record in the rough water.

 

Conditions are part of the sport. Train for the conditions you expect. Travel is also part of the sport and Malaysia sounds like a fun destination. Bring a snorkel?

 

Eric

[Horton]

@MillerTime38

 

[Horton]

@eleeski you already have Infinite Pandas so I do not know what to do

[thager]

How do you train for random external rollers? Rent a harbor?

 

[Horton]

Correction. After some thought I have a new award. The turbo-encabulator award.

 

@eleeski congratulations you are the first ever recipient of the Turbo-Encabulator award

 

[unksskis]

Haven't heard a jumper have a single nice thing to say about the conditions, safer going with their opinion since they experienced it. Props to Ryan.

[vtmecheng]

I'm fairly new to following these tournaments but I do understand that they are not payed NFL levels to do this. They have full time jobs and in some cases need to support families. Getting hurt doesn't mean going to a team surgeon and having the team still give you some amount per a contract. They may not be able to work and not get payed. Plus they have to pay for all the doctor costs, which are crazy in the USA.

 

My point, it isn't right to put them in a situation that increases risks unnecessarily. Would some of these injuries have occurred with perfect conditions? Sure but I bet some would not have. A track and field sprinter at a world championship expects to run on a nice surface with appropriate grip and no potholes. We should expect nothing less in water skiing.

[BraceMaker]

My perspective - there are world level competitions and there are exhibitions for the general public.

 

Exhibitions people don't go all out and try to win.

[Chef23]

@MillerTime38 I don't think @Horton's point was that skiers outside the US were at a disadvantage I believe that he is saying that they all train in similar conditions in FL. In addition it seemed like sites in Spain and Italy had great conditions. I know Moomba has variable conditions but nobody trains there.

[GaryWilkinson]

I believe it’s as simple as this:

 

If a country’s site is bidding and its “reasonably” safe with conditions like Moomba and the Masters where the issue is best explained by saying they have “predictable rollers”. AND they’re pretty sure to have big crowds? Then it’s worth sacrificing world record potential for exposure. (But never safety)

 

In the absence of reasonably safe conditions and potential of big crowds? We should have world championships at the worlds best sites for performances and the small crowds that attend them.

 

Let’s face it, the biggest audience for our sport now is water-skiers that view it online.

 

Heck, I’d even travel to see a World championship at places like Shortline lake and Swiss.

 

 

Also, Watch the video of Ryan again kids. He wasn’t bitching at the Organization Committee, (he was praising them for doing what they could to get good conditions)

 

He was complaining about, and to the IWWF for picking that site in the first place.

 

The Malaysian official took it very personally and lost his sh/t. HE got very personal and attacked and insulted Ryan and Jarred. That showed bad judgement for someone who’s supposed to be above all that and just generally childish behaviour. We should expect better from our sports’ management personnel.

[B_S]

Actual picture from the event. The waterski deep state did not want this to get out, but the truth will prevail!

 

[Swerve200]

Bottom line is IWWF is going to continue to sell out the skiers for $$$, why, because they can. If there were more high profile events with a purse, skiers could boycott. Unfortunately, there are very few events they can participate in that would offer a purse or incentives from sponsors. Just a fact.

 

 

[Slalom.Steve]

It seems to me that defending the conditions in Malaysia by arguing that water skiing is dangerous and that injuries happen even in perfect conditions is like saying there's no point in creating/enforcing speed limits for cars.

1. Driving is dangerous (it is) - Skiing is dangerous (it is)

2. Accidents/injuries happen even when people are driving only 40mph (they do) - Accidents/injuries happen even when skiing in perfect conditions (they do)

3. So there's no point in trying to mitigate the risk by having speed limits (wait what?) - So there's no point in trying to mitigate the risk by finding safer skiing conditions (wait what?)

And even if one says, "well these people are choosing to compete in a dangerous sport, whereas driving is almost a necessity of life", then just flip the argument to something like football. Just because it's inherently dangerous doesn't mean we shouldn't do everything we can to mitigate the risk by improving the quality of helmets, for example.

 

Arguing that other sports like alpine skiing are also often at the mercy of uncontrollable conditions is closer to a good argument, but I still doesn't think it really holds up.

To have a downhill comp, you need 1.5-3 horizontal miles of snow, with up to 3,200 ft of vertical elevation - not exactly something that's all over the place. To have a water ski comp, you just need 0.4 miles of water, which is everywhere. In downhill, there's really nothing you can do about the weather or deteriorating snow. In water ski, you can find ideal conditions fairly easily by having a small lake with wind protection and at least by ensuring there's no other boats out there. The alpine comparison to Malaysia would like like having a downhill competition on a mountain with a ton of wind exposure even though there's a much calmer mountain right over there, and there's also some amateur skiers going down the course at random times that some skiers have to ski around and others don't. Again, doesn't really hold up as validation for Malaysia, IMHO.

[jimbrake]

The bummer/good thing about World Cup ski racing is that they will cancel a speed event if the conditions are not deemed safe and try to reschedule or cancel altogether. Bummer that some of the best races at the best venues get a) shortened to a lower start b) rescheduled to another hill later or c) cancelled and don't happen that year. It's good for the competitors though. Water skiing has none of those options.

[dvskier]

Alpine ski racing is at much higher speeds and the course is really ice, not snow. Ask Lindsay Vonn how hard it is when crashing. Dangerous even in perfect conditions especially coming off a jump and simultaneously turning on the course.

 

For sure the conditions at the worlds in Malaysia were dangerous. Otherwise the number of injuries and overalll less than world class results from top athletes. IWWF should strive for better sites.

[E_T]

Boycott worlds. Hit them where it hurts. Wakeskating had a world championship this past weekend that had 0 promotion and all the money DONATED went to the winner some where around 10k. You don’t need a governing body to have a big event.