 Poster: A snowHead
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| gryphea wrote: |
I think, quite rightly, this will spark a big debate about training safety. Well, I hope it will. I think we could find downhill to be a dying event. The training space and time is really difficult as it is and it may be the price is too high and the safety requirements make it impractical for many. I have two racing kids; I really find speed to be: expensive due to the requirement for training days and skis and worrying from safety perspective. Speed events essentially mean more missed school and therefore the trade off just doesn't seem to be there. A speed (SG) race for my U14 is a 4 day race event. Two days race and two days training. That makes it very expensive.
I think with all that , we will see speed skiing really declining. I think resorts (and parents) will be hesitant to offer training and racing for kids and so the whole event will decline in numbers. As kids ski it less it will also become more dangerous, because the number of training days will decline. |
I'm not so sure. There are always people who want to take risks and as long as they exist there will still be sports and venues that will offer it to them. Look at the IoM TT as an example. 31 riders killed in the last 10 years yet it is still as popular with riders as it has ever been. I watched the SG at Bormio with my 10 year old. He keeps telling me he can't wait until he is old enough to do it. When he is old enough if he still wants to do it I won't stop him. I'll be watching with my heart in my mouth.
It is always sad when a sportsperson dies doing what he/she loves. People enjoy watching them. As an F1 fan I vividly remember the horrendous weekend at Monza when first Roland Ratzenberger died and the following we lost Ayrton Senna.
My Dad always says of people who take enormous risks in sport that they "Have a screw loose." I agree with him. It is in the part of the brain that engages the self preservation instinct.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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| primoz wrote: |
| They just started putting A-nets up week or two ago in Kitzbuehel and race is there in middle of January. |
I've been following the Kitzbühel FB page this year and was genuinely surprised at how early the preparation starts. The first post showing actual race preparations was 12th October. Once I thought about it of course it seemed logical that much would have to be done before any chance of permanent snowfall but it just goes to prove Primozs point about the extent of work that would be required to make a temporary practice course as 'safe' as the likes of the Streif.
Condolences to all David Poissons family, friends and colleagues. He always struck me as a nice guy who was always giving his best and loved what he was doing.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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@eng_ch, The whole run is netted as the entire run has trees on the sides.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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A very sad incident yesterday at the Nor-Am at lake louise. A 17 year old german boy died after a crash in the training run.
Having spoken to numerous people since the DP crash, I feel there is not quite enough investigation and publication of lessons learned following an incident. I work in a construction related field and any sniff of an incident provokes detailed investigations and lessons learned which are very widely published.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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@gryphea, Racing anything isn't really like construction. If you want to race and want to win you are putting yourself up against the boundaries of physics. You have to push that little bit more and you have to accept the it could be painful or fatal. That doesn't apply to going about your daily job in construction. It should be safe.
(I used to race motorbikes....I know a lot of dead people. In the hours leading up to the start it is in the back of your mind that this could be your last race and last day but once the flag drops there is nothing on your mind other than the next turn. I guess any investigation would conclude that anyone who is prepared to die in a race or training is bonkers.)
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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@Thornyhill, don't you ever sleep?
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I was really hoping for more to come out in terms of what went wrong with the DP crash. I remember an article that seemed to indicate there was a binding failure but I couldn't find anything else on it nor any other media outlets mentioning it.
Redbull media released a documentary called the the strief that focus on the Hahnenkamm race and the amount of prep work that goes into it: https://www.redbull.tv/film/AP-1N2AS3F5W2111/streif
Also the Lake Louise course must have been fully set up with all A/B netting in place and other safety devices as the mens and womens WC DH just took place there over the past 2 weeks. Really sad - RIP.
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@extremerob, Louise course had ample netting. I was there for the womens' first downhill and there was more netting than I've seen before. Where Vonn crashed there was 5 layers, and I've only ever seen 3.
@Thornyhill, its not quite as simple as that. Conditions and course set can make a course more dangerous than another course, because of soft snow or because a spill zone directs someone into a dangerous area. Therefore there will be lessons about spill zones etc that can be applied everywhere, but if there isn't some sort of database or investigation and everyone takes your attitude then nothing will get safer. Its a bit like designing motorways; the speed is still great but various other elements are built in to make that speed safer. In skiing, it could be course set, spill zones, jump zones , equipment etc.
Only rumors in this case, but from people at top and middle of course that day, that the conditions were too soft as it was warm and late in the day and that the kid crashed after mis-taking a jump, the jump propelled him, as I understand it over and on top of netting.
When Nik Z died in a ski cross incident on the world cup when he propelled off a jump outside of the course, his parents felt very strongly and fought to have a lessons learned. FIS were very hesitant
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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The FIS do learn lessons Gernot Reinstadler died as a result of his ski getting caught in netting at high speed on the Lauberhorn Race Course in 1991, as a direct result much of the high speed netting has a covering to prevent things being caught, prior to netting it used to be chestnut pailing to separate skiers from crowds, I'm sure I recall someone getting impaled on that but I can't find a reference.
As the DHO webmaster (bloody awful title) I regularly deal with our Racing and Training Staff, they deal with race trainees for the whole winter season and into the summer, everyone who takes part, children and parents alike understand that travelling at high speed on skis can and does occasionally lead to accidents, sometimes fatalities, of course the kids never believe t will happen to them, so it's the coaches and trainers who get the responsibility of accident prevention, they do a really good job of this but when an accident does occur these days everyone looks at who to blame.
The reality is that with experienced skiers high speed crashes tend to be a result of a combination of errors, most often initially caused by an edge catching on something, in that fraction of a second balance is lost and with it control, if it occurs on a tight bend or jump then there is rarely time to self correct and a crash occurs, modern helmets protect the head pretty well, but if you fly over the netting or just as bad get a limb or skis caught in the netting, serious injuries result.
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| extremerob wrote: |
| I was really hoping for more to come out in terms of what went wrong with the DP crash. I remember an article that seemed to indicate there was a binding failure but I couldn't find anything else on it nor any other media outlets mentioning it. |
A ski came off mid-run, he flew through a safety net, and hit a tree.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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| ansta1 wrote: |
| @Thornyhill, don't you ever sleep? |
Naw - Its a waste of time.
@gryphea, I doesn't take an investigation to work out what might happen in a given set of circumstances on a particular bend or jump. What is really needed is a huge amount of funding. F1 is very safe. Tracks cost tens or hundreds of millions to build and make safe. That is OK in a multi billion dollar industry but it isn't going to happen for ski training, racing or road racing as there isn't the funding to support it. FIS agreed to spend 250k over 5 years to improve safety after Nik Z's death.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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@Thornyhill, where and how the gates are set and positioned may make some courses more dangerous than others because of the way spill zones direct people. Ditto speed skiing in conditions that are too soft. There aren't costs really associated with those.
18 months ago I volunteered at the Whistler cup. They stopped the Super G race because too many kids were coming into the slush at the finish line and crashing once they had completed the race. Thing is, the weather was predicted to be hot, it was late season and they didn't start racing until around 11:45, making it very slushy for late bib numbers. They were still trying to race at 2:45 pm. It was a joke. The week after that I was at a race in Panorama, same sort of conditions. The race was all over by around 11:30 am. Its just planning. But the kind of planning that can make a safety difference.
Ditto, course sets.
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@D G Orf,
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| The FIS do learn lessons Gernot Reinstadler died as a result of his ski getting caught in netting at high speed on the Lauberhorn Race Course in 1991 |
There were actually a few incidents similar to Reinstadler's before they finally acted though. In particular I'm thinking of Briam Stemmle's crash on the Steilhang in Kitz 1989, where he shredded his pelvis in the same way as Reinstadler.
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You know it makes sense.
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