Than_Bogan

I think ONE is best performed on a slalom ski. Out-the-front Nasal Excavator

@mike_mapple. True. And the obvious correct choices are Jordan and Andy :).

Fwiw, I personally am not concerned at all with breaking world records. My concern is that this particular sport, as it reaches the limits of what is possible, accidentally begins to rely heavily on the driver. Proposals that decrease the significance of the driver are of interest to me!

@FWinter is such a phenomenal commentator that people might start rooting for him to not advance so that he can get in the booth! :) I mean, not ME of course...

@BHarris Hopefully you're not using your chest muscles to hold the handle :). It's easy to completely exhaust forearm muscles. If you have one completely failed grip (handle ripped out of your hands), it can take weeks for those muscles to work properly again. As I've gotten older (now 50), my forearms have a little more trouble in general, and I definitely suggest experimenting with the handle style and diameter. You may even want to purposely use different diameters throughout the season.

We had as good course skier on my lake around 250 for years, and he certainly was not buried in the water for 100' on his takeoffs. Definitely look into the changes and suggestions in this thread and don't accept that as normal.

I've never seen a ski boat take more than 5 seconds to bring *anyone* to a full upright position, so I'm wondering if the comments related to holding breath are hinting at something else being wrong?

My answer may reflect my poor memory more than my slalom safety...

Although @Bruce_Butterfield 's criteria seem right, they also seem to make it very clear that we should eliminate the concept. If the only way to achieve the score is with a potentially dangerous crash, is that really how we want our sport to work!?

That 38 is impressive. I have to kinda laugh at beautiful openers that people post, because that tells you nothing about what the ski does. If you want to see the contribution of the ski, you need to see a pass where the person on top needs some help. Looks like this ski is a winner!

Broke my little toe sliding out of an RTP when I was a teenager. In the following 30+ yrs, no acute events, but lots of wear and tear injuries.

How did you review it so fast? Super distinctive?

Silver carp are an invasive species that jump when exposed to engine noise. Probably not that because there are usually tons of them. But a rogue fish is certainly possible.

Looking forward to hearing about it. I could imagine no effect or unskiable or awesome!

Yep -- the "unofficial" WISTMS scoreboard shows him running it three out of four rounds!! Would I be correct to think that only Nate Smith has run -41 three times in two days before? Dr. Jim rope? :)

Fun stuff. C85, Pineapple, Origin. That's three purposely different skis in a row! Seems like an awesome year to be a ski reviewer!

@wish Can you provide a link or more details? I really don't care what my shorts look like, so lasting and inexpensive sounds great!

Original HO Talon gloves.

@MichaelGoodman I've never even been able to determine what metric should be optimized to call it an optimal path, much less actually optimize that magic metric! So: No. :)

The skier actually has a great deal of control over the path taken, because they (indirectly) select the angle of the rope at each moment in time. However, both some analysis I've done and some overhead shots suggest that the skier does indeed *prefer* a path that is longer as the rope gets shorter. The easiest way to see this is that the skier travels the same distance across, but increasing distance in the downcourse direction. They are basically taking a less direct route to the ball. And at very short line lengths, deviation from the easiest possible path gets much harder really fast. So probably nobody will be choosing their own crazy path -- it's just too difficult.

Thoughts haven't changed at all. 3@9.75 is still clearly possible, but the gap between 10.25 and 9.75 is far more difficult than the other gaps. Either add a 10m line or go all radical @drew on this sport's ass and make the course wider.

@ScottScott Actually no. I'm 99% sure he does not want anyone to pull in. That would be a disaster and I believe he knows that. But the fact that so many reading this think that's what he's talking about is why this is not useful coaching. It was all kinda funny until he demanded credit based on something that @Horton didn't understand nor try... Now I am just counting down to when he is banned.

No specific threshold for me. I'll ski in anything that isn't dangerous. In fact, this season has been almost entirely in wind that was "just safe enough." The rare days with half-decent conditions have felt like cheating!

Look forward to learning more. Definitely some intriguing elements there.

Very intrigued! I have dumb questions: 1. Does this require binding lube? 2. Does this release like a rubber boot with the foot coming out? 3. Can it be attached to standard binding plates or how does it go onto the ski?