auskier

where do I sign? ... I wish!

For those that follow pros on social media, there has been a number of 'interesting' posts in recent months. CP looks like he was experimenting on one also.

@Splasheye I asked Freddy about that. He said he thought he had 3 over 70m at a UK event a number of years ago, but not as far as his third. It is probably the highest totaled or averaged distance for a single round of jump ever.

The moomba festival as a whole, is probably similar to a state fair in your language. A fair ground that has a large enough lake is what you want.

Yes, end course too. We do not bend any rules when it comes to meeting L or R rules. Its easy to have a very good EC image because of the close proximity at the city end. For the last few years we have had a PTZ camera run by fibre optic back to the tower. Its very nice to have full HD images.

@Edbrazil I am the TC. Of course we will have video gates. Have done so for many years now. Video from the boat for slalom is a different story all together.

@lpskier if you are suggesting that there is 8' long bungee on the gates at moomba, you couldn't be any more wrong. @ToddL The buoy lines are virtually no stretch very thin lines that go down to the cross wire. Believe me, so many different methods have been tried over the years. Every element of the course and how it is setup has a very good reason for being the way it is given the challenges of the site. Frank and Dave who manage the course have been doing it for over 25 years each and have seen it all.

We will be using the world rule from the year 2000. "14.08: A miss or "Riding Over" It is a miss to ride inside a buoy or outside the entrance or end gate or to ride over, straddle or jump over a buoy or gate buoy; but there is no penalty for grazing a buoy with a ski or part of the body. "Riding over" shall be defined as hitting a buoy with the ski so as to move it significantly from it position or temporarily sink it. Hitting a buoy less severely shall be considered as "grazing." A skier shall be judged as missing the entry or exit gate when the ski passes entirely and clearly outside the gate buoy." In other words, get a piece of the gate ball with your ski and your gates will be given. If there is clear space between the ski and the gate ball, they will be pulled.

Coyote (Brothers research) SNOB (boat) Sam (lake Sammamish) Zorn (tx ski site) Rossi (the guru) Syndicate (HO) Freddy (Kruger) TED (Three Event Dog) Indmar (motor) Callaway (gardens) Splash (eye)

http://images.boats.com/resize/wp/2/files/2011/03/SkiNautiqueE2-copy.jpg end thread..

I was starting to wonder if you were geo-blocking me somehow! Just because Trum.... never mind.

Getting hurt doing crossfit is not any higher probability than doing something you shouldnt do skiing. Going for that one extra rep, when you are fatigued and you are compromising on good technique when you probably should rest, is no different to getting in an eye peeling lean lock out of 5 ball on your hardest pass. You know you sure as hell should have popped the handle before the white water, but you held on anyway and that trough off the second wake is going to eat you and send you supermaning to 6 ball in a 'ball of spray'.. see what I did there..

whatever happened to that TW guy from east russia?

I have discussed similar ideas to this with a few pros and 41+ capable skiers in recent times. It does raise a valid point and question that; are we teaching slalom skiing wrong for skiers with high ambitions? So many skills required to run very short lines vastly differ from those believed to be required to run 15-35 off. Concepts such as 'being wide and early', 'building ski load and speed' with a 'stacked position', or lots of 'cross course angle' for example dont necessarily apply when learning to run super shortline. Being 'wide and early' at 41 is not efficient. You have possibly burnt yourself to get that space. You are likely to have loaded very heavily, or gained mach 10 speed. Anyone noticed that Nate typically skis A's while most other pros ski C's? Does this give him better outbound speed to come up on the boat, versus speed and load off the ball? Possibly. I have been told that ideas such as 'body speed' versus 'ski speed' become more important to consider to minimise excessive load. I have been fortunate enough to drive many skiers through 39 and 41 at 34 and 36. Its doesnt take long to gain an idea about how it should feel to drive and how well the pass is going to go, just by the load taken from the gate shot and out of 1 ball. Load, speed and line control become absurdly critical. Driving a pro through 38 or 39 can be easier than driving for someone who has been stuck at a few at 38 for many years, and will struggle to make that next step due to the level of load they develop. Having said all that, would I take a mini course skier off the dock at 38 and believe them as capable of accomplishing anything positive from it? Hell no. Concepts like getting the ski under the line, developing cross course direction and carrying speed off the second wake, staying connected, and coming up on the boat would be near impossible to learn taking such an approach. Those are much more important for learning short line slalom. I wouldn't be surprised if this earns me a panda, but whatever.

Decades ago, I believe tournaments were run where every skier would start at a full 75 foot line. The whole field would run a single pass. Only then would the line be shortened and the field go through again. So it could take some time for your set to be done - providing you ran a number of passes. Can you confirm @Edbrazil ? Certainly not as exciting as more contemporary head to head formats, but certainly different compared to how we do things these days.

now it looks a little softer than a 88 ... by memory, the 88 was the softest? Or was it the 106 or something? Im pretty sure I have a few 88 redims around somewhere.

for what it is, the clip is very cool. I dont recall ever seeing a camera angle that goes through the spray like that before. well done @The_Krista

I read this book cover to cover DOZENS of times. http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51E4vKVOnAL._SX390_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

Well this is now the geekiest thread on BOS ever.. I am certainly no engineer, and dont know much difference between a moment arm and a forearm (im in the medical field), however one aspect I have thought about that may add to the complexity is water compression or density and its journey through a concave of a ski. More force is required to move a more dense liquid through a space (ie a ski concave), or has a higher resistance to deformity. Therefore, as a result of the higher water resistance and pressure, I see the result being that the ski will sit higher and reduce speed more quickly. This causes the common complaints of being narrow, fast and unstable. Warmer water having a lower density will be able to be compressed much more easily underneath a ski and requires less force to do so - the ski will sit deeper, hold better direction, speed etc. This means less fin surface area required, fin can be further forward and more length to initiate the turn sooner. Our water temp is rapidly warming up, however I found myself having to move back, deeper and reduce length to try and get width and maintain outbound direction. Nice to see im on the same page as a few of the brains trust!

With plenty of talk lately about flex ie. T series and flex tail skis, interesting comments from Joel on the GT. For those of you active on social media, you may have seen that Joel and Nick Parsons are in Korea at the moment. Here is the interview.

@skierjp while splash eye is a very good piece of software, it is still an analogue feed going into a capture card, the same basic principle that the Corson programs have run for the last 15 years and then some. Splash eye currently does not allow HD input. While some sites have mastered it to the best it can be (such as okeeheelee) the image quality and frame rate is still old technology.

The reality is, that we don't have the money to make sure the right call is made a lot of the time. Everyone knows a story where a bank full of people see things much differently to what the judges have scored something. Much of it does come down to quality of picture and frame rates they are having to judge with. The technology isn't a problem, its just costs a lot of Benjamin's. The sad thing is, we basically need professional grade TV equipment to do things optimally. http://www.readymaderc.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=11_403&products_id=3080&zenid=5254a09ce923a0123d1b7e22b8f0eaf8

golf. its winter.

@Horton said it.. Also, a 'review judge' is not an appointed judge, or is his/her score used to gain a score. It ultimately comes down to the cheif judges decision if the event judges can not make a decision. see world rule 14:11 This not an issue of integrity or manipulation, its a problem with the rules and the constraints that are constantly increasing on the sport. I have been a technical controller at moomba for 8 years. I dont need to tell any follower of our sport there has been a number of contentious issues at moomba in recent years. Some of these are due to unavoidable aspects of the site. For example; how often do pro skiers train in a situation where you need to pull out for your gates as the boat is straightening, zero off is engaging, pulling out into a strong head current while dodging plastic bottles? It causes issues. This year, we decided to not use video from the boat, therefore not being an R class event. Instead, we used 5 senior, world class judges on each side of the lake. Anyone remember the Billy Susi incident? Having a high quality video feed from the boat is near impossible at a place like moomba or callaway, short of a few hundred thousand dollars worth of professional equipment. That leaves us with commercial grade equipment. Add in interference from the city, 100,000 people with electronic devices in the visible area, it all impacts on quality of video transmission. In years gone past, we have turned on receivers and watched security camera footage in the city. It is a noisy area for transmitted signals. At moomba, the direction of the river and the sun causes significant issues in the afternoon as the sun is almost directly behind the skier around 1-3-5 going away from the city. Put all these factors together and it makes it difficult for a judge to make a decision on whether or not a skier went around a bit of rubber a few inches above the water, while the skier is probably travelling 40+mph when you need it most. This review capability is supposed to clarify errors beyond reasonable doubt. Unfortunately the use of boat video, in the way the rules are written, often only causes more confusion. This situation is just another example of it. As it stands, there is too much unknown. Did the boat judge call 6 and without knowing otherwise, not hearing the radio bring freddy back at 41? Was the score always 5 and the person in charge of the scoreboard put up 3 at 41? Was the boat told to bring Nate on? The public dont know when, where or how the scores swapped to and from 5 at 39 to 3 at 41. Dont blame the judges, blame the complexity of the judging rules and system that they are bound by.

the 2015's with the 5.7 do feel much more powerful with the new transmission. The shaft angle change as part of the new ratio, also helps it push out of the hole and up to speed quicker.