matthewbrown

Never trust former roommates

That boat looks like it’s on a sheet of ice, I see very little stability or consistency with the path in those passes.

@Horton I believe the higher the hips everywhere, especially in the transition the better.

@BigGerald3 their intention is not to suck up knees and they have spent years trying to be taller. However, the emphasis is not so much on being super tall with shoulders too far away from the boat rather, the emphasis is to stay on top of the ski instead of shooting it out in front through the edgechange. You cannot maximize handle swing when the ski is too far out in front of you through the transition.

I wonder what the camera guy was thinking. I’m sure it wasn’t about the stellar set of double handles the skier was utilizing.

These are all great sayings and all but I just want to see the video of him at 43....can’t someone please provide that?

It’s not about open or closed, It’s about centering your mass at all points in the course. @Gloersen in all your pics only the first skier is stacked and centered and also does happen to be the most open, but the rest are back behind their ski and are therefore not centered or stacked.

@liquid d did you just blame the boat driver for missing 39? :D

@Rednucleus best most common sense post I’ve seen.

@Bruce_Butterfield hit the nail on the head, we do not know for sure what this virus will do. We have a pretty good idea of the risks of automobiles, and what cardiovascular disease and cancer will provide us in the way of caskets this year, but we’ve had ample data on these for years and evidently are ok with the regulation/freedom balance within them. Nobody is racing to shutdown all Crispy Creme donut stores to help you not have a cardiovascular event in the future. This is a novel human virus as it had only been in animals, and the info I have gleaned from Evolutionary Biologists and Virologist is that it most likely originated in cave dwelling larger bats who kept their distance from one another. Like all viruses it wants to perpetuate its presence into the future by spreading from host to host but not killing its host hence only the .6% mortality risk for this particular virus. It’s not a very effective virus if it kills its host. In animals it rarely killed its hosts but the fear is, through time it could variate enough to malfunction and kill more humans than we had expected. Again, having just 3 weeks to take all this in and try to come up with risk reward variables compared to what we know about other killers in our life just isn’t realistic. As @Than_Bogan said we just don’t have enough data yet.

@The_MS we’ve come along way with automobile safety over the years that include better construction, safety bags, signage and control lights, but, we can still buy a Dodge Demon Hellcat Redeye with 800hp, get plastered and crash it into a wall if we should so choose(or not choose). We have found an acceptable balance at least for now with regulations and freedoms in the auto world, I think we are just trying to do the same with Covid-19 on about 3 weeks notice.

3 weeks of pandemic brings our strong American system to its knees. 3 weeks. It just shows how fragile everything is when it revolves around man hours. I have no answer but know that we can do better and must do better. They are saying we will have a mortality rate of around .6% when this is over, what happens the next time when a gnarly bird flu rolls through with a 60% mortality rate?

@BraceMaker even easier, you should only need one great camera in the boat when you have a top 5 woman or man on the water, doesn’t matter if it’s L or R. Nobody else is a threat to break the world record. If they are at different locations across the globe on the same day, then IWSF should be able to still provide that equipment and expect that standard.

Just get some stellar cameras in the boat please and you can keep it simple to start to see how it works. Whenever the top 5 women and men are on the water, at a pristine private lake, and are trying to break a world record, be more prepared.

If the leading edge of the ski clears the outside of the buoy while the boot hits the top of the buoy, there is no way the buoy artifact we see in the picture would be there, That is caused by the leading edge of the ski, not the boots dunking the binding.

@Bruce_Butterfield you make great points. How far do we want to chase the rabbit down the hole by stressing the system and going overboard. Part of the problem is that the only video provided is C grade at best. Even with that video the judges clearly made a mistake. So, why don’t we make things easier? A better camera on the pylon would be a good start especially when dealing with the best in the world who are looking to smash records. Also, add another camera to be run by a person in the boat that is of A+ quality. At this point when the world record is on the line, explain to me why we need a judge in the boat at all? I would have called 4.5 on that 41 too if I was the judge in real time. Let the boat driver call the times in and shorten the rope. Get a great camera in the boat with someone to operate it, and get the judge out of there. Surely the IWSF could deal with that, and you’ll never have a dispute about gates or rounded buoys. Look at this video, with backlight, no way a call would be missed. It’s time to move from 1990’s technology to the 2020’s.

@liquid d I believe you, you have already proved yourself in the past by being one of the first guys to call bs on dr Jim.

@Bruce_Butterfield I am not debating whether officials make mistakes in sports, I think that is a given. I am railing against the ho hum attitude of “what’s done is done we need to move on, stop beating a dead horse.” It means too much to me, It degrades the sport, the pride the respect and the legitimacy of it all. It’s like telling a skier to go ahead and forget about learning proper handle control because it’s too hard for them. That’s regression, not progression. In fact, what I’d like to know is what were the officials looking at when they slowed this tape down frame by frame? Who looked at it, how long did they spend and what were the deciding factors? I’ve seen the original video with higher resolution and it just solidifies what this rough cut clearly shows. It’s just wrong, they screwed up and if enough noise is made perhaps they will assess their reviewing methods in the future. We are talking about the greatest female skier of all time and a new world record, not a big dog skier trying to make that 16th spot by getting a piece of 5 ball at 38. One bad call against the Saints, and progress was made the following year with pass interference review. We can either remain static with our heads in the sand, or be proactive and work towards improving the way we preserve the integrity of our sport.

@MISkier it seemed you were referring to the force with which the buoy popped back up into view a few frames later which is an excellent observation, but there was no mention of the artifact in the spray which undeniably verifies your theory. Also, her ski takes a nose dive after the buoy further proving your theory that she ran over the buoy which lifted her ski up momentarily before dropping it back in the water with force.

There is no way on earth, that the skier could have produced the buoy shaped artifact in her spray, and still gone on the outside of the buoy. This artifact was not present at 1 ball or 3 ball. I can not believe this has gone unnoticed so far and most likely skipped the judges eye as well. Again, not taking anything away from possibly the greatest skier of all time as she will no doubt run this pass soon, and the boat path was insanely straight on this pass, but facts are facts.

This dude is great.

Athletic ability and quality time on the water with a great coach.

@Horton in a class L or R you would run 5@38 behind me, in a class C you would run 5@39 behind me. There should only be one class of tournament where the integrity of the sport is always kept in tact, with the exception of a class F tournament where beer is required and swimsuit tops are not.

Nothing wrong with having an intelligent discussion where relevant facts are murky at best.

That’s 4 if I’ve ever seen 4, that would be what it looked like. That being said, I think the driver short changed her, so may as well just give her a full 5 or maybe even 6 buoys while your at it, she’s going to run it soon anyway.