 Poster: A snowHead
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| motdoc wrote: |
I hate to say it but I agree with Masque on this. You could list the results mixed and by sex. I do wonder if you'd see the women getting faster?
Apart from generating twice as many days from the same talent pool (which I suspect is the reason) there isn't much point in splitting. The other issue would be on a given course you would only get so many runs so would you loose half the men and half the women? |
That's the worst bit of the idea for me. It would probably be more like an 80:20 or 90:10 split at the moment. So worst case scenario 90% of the elite female racers would drop to a lower competition. That's a terrible idea.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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@motdoc, if they're competing with each other on a meritocratic basis (which is the whole crux of the argument) no: you wouldn't lose half the men and half the women, you would lose a handful of men and most of the women.
Based on current performance, women would get no medals, virtually no prize money and not having the chance of making it onto the podiums, would struggle for sponsorship.
There would be no more women's teams, just a few girls here and there in a male dominated sport. That's hardly going to inspire young girls to get into it is it? Might as well stay home and practise looking after their men 
But on the upside, at least Masque would have something to complain about on their behalf: "See how women skiers earn so much less than men  "
OTOH maybe the little ladies will just buck their ideas up and put on a proper performance once they've got some boys to show off to?
When these people, men and women, have dedicated their lives to training solidly to gain an advantage of a tenth of a second against their nearest rival, when a 'huge error' adds a second to your time and puts you entirely out of the running, to suggest that women can somehow 'be inspired' to find 3 seconds by getting beaten down the ranks by men is frankly delusional.
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@admin, also 3 seconds may not sound much but in a race of 100ish seconds it’s 3%, an unbridgeable gap.
Frank Williams was asked what made his cars so dominant. He replied something along the lines of it being a race of 120 minutes so 0.5% advantage is about 36 seconds. Spread over 100k components in the car he couldn’t possibly tell what it was but it turned races into a procession.
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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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I struggle to understand your argument, Masque. The women's ski racing scene is extremely competitive. Many very fine and dedicated athletes are training and competing with each other. Most of them will fail to reach the very top. Only one can win each competition. I quite see that athletes need top level competition to reach their potential but all but a tiny handful can get all the competition they need in the women's competition and there doesn't seem to be a great groundswell of support from ambitious women skiers for your proposals.
Some of your instincts and values are to be applauded - but your specific proposals (not to mention your unnecessarily combative language) are not. The idea that women can only reach their full potential in open competition with men, and are not to be fully valued unless and until they can compete on an equal basis is even, perhaps, a bit insulting!
More widely, and looking at girls' participation in sports at the everyday, local school level, it's important not to push the competitive aspects to the exclusion of all else. If girls are doing some race training, and improving their skills and enjoying themselves that's arguably more important than testing a tiny handful of the world's best against a huge field of male athletes against whom they have little hope of success.
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| Tom Doc wrote: |
| I'm impressed so many people are willing to engage with @Masque |
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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I've changed my mind. I'd like to see the women racing me (pretty good not amazing), masque, a level 3 and a level 4 instructor - and ripping all our legs off - for the sake of perspective.
I still think there is something sexist about the whole thing though - why different runs on different days as a rule? I spend most of my time watching the cycling and TBH my shoulder chip is mostly from there, why don't the women get a 3 week race? Why are they paid less? They'd muller any Mamil schmo (me and my mates) and not competing with the men lends itself to not realising just how good they are (eg - better than every man on the planet - minus about 30).
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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Interesting to see the competitions at the World champs allow all competitors who completed the first run to take their 2nd run after the top 30. It's refreshing to see people skiing who look like there would be a chance to compete with them, but rather surprising how much slower they are than the regular competitors, yet still qualified to enter.
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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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| motdoc wrote: |
| I still think there is something sexist about the whole thing though - why different runs on different days as a rule? |
Lower level FIS races don't do this, you will have male and female races on the same day in one place, either on different courses or just run all the women then all the men down one course.
There is also a social aspect to these races, the current system means that boys and girls of the same age get to mix, this wouldn't happen as much if you were just running one mixed sex race.
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@Roguevfr, It is only World Cup and Continents Cup (Europa, Far East, etc...) that don't give everyone who finishes the first run a start in the second, the first 30 are still in reverse order though.
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You know it makes sense.
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Just found this thread and going to join in with comments from Freestyle Skiing. I was a Freestyle ski judge for over 20 years, starting off judging on plastic and ended up as one of the 3 GBR world cup mogul judges. I retired from this 3 years ago and had been on the Scottish and GBR Freestyle Committees. Note I was a volunteer, paid for my own training but got expenses when judging competitions.
In all Freestyle Ski (and Snowboard) events men and women have separate competitions but compete on exactly the same courses in the same resort on the same days and are judged by the same judging panel to the same criteria. Judging documents can be found on the FIS website https://www.fis-ski.com/en/inside-fis/document-library/freestyle-freeski-documents. Warning - there are lots of documents!!
I hadn't considered this question before so did some research by downloading the results from the last WC Moguls event in Deer Valley on 4 February as it contains lots of technical data. It is a good basis for comparison as the events were won by Mikael Kinsbury CAN and Perrine Lafont FRA who have been the top moguls skiers for several years, both wining the crystal globe many times.
Mogul skiing is judged on turns 60% two air jumps 20% and speed 20%. The speed points awarded are a comparison with the 'pace time' for that course which is calculated from course length and what is set as the male or female possible speed, currently 10.3m/s for men and 8.80m/s for women. So FIS thinks that men and women cannot ski the same course at the same speed. In Deer Valley the course was 250m long and gradient 29degrees. Kingsbury completed his winning run in 24.18sec but Lafont was 27.68sec. Remember these are currently the best mogul skiers in the world and the woman is 3.5sec slower. There were 37 men completing the course in that competition and only 5 of them skied slower than Lafont.
Looking at their air jumps Kingsbury did back double full (back flip with 2 twists) and 1080 offaxis with a position all landing in 29 degree moguls. Lafont did 720 offaxis with position and back flip with grab. So the best man can get an extra complete rotation in his offaxis jump and extra twists in back somersault. There are no women currently competing in moguls who are doing 1080 or back double full airs.
I rest my case that men and women need to compete in single sex competitons. I have given data from moguls as it is the easiest to explain but similar scenarios apply in the other Freestyle/Freeski events.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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| motdoc wrote: |
| I spend most of my time watching the cycling and TBH my shoulder chip is mostly from there, why don't the women get a 3 week race? Why are they paid less? They'd muller any Mamil schmo (me and my mates) and not competing with the men lends itself to not realising just how good they are (eg - better than every man on the planet - minus about 30). |
Bit of a necro-observation as I realise I'm commenting on a 2-month-old comment, but there are some areas of cycle racing where women compete directly with men (or any other gender, genetic or self-defined) completely equally, and sometimes win - the Transamerica and Transcontinental bike races have each been won by women, who make up a minority of the mixed field.
It appears that if you make the event long and hard enough, women compete on at least an equal footing. For those who don't follow the minority sport of ultraendurance bike racing, it involves races of thousands of miles in length, with no stages and no scheduled breaks. None of this shower/dinner/soft bed in a hotel and 10 hours sleep between EPO shots like a pro cyclist; usually just 3-4hours/night and a bivy bag in a ditch.
Mix in enough suffering and sleep deprivation and women start to outperform (the same has been seen in ultradistance hiking and running). Maybe the answer for skiing is to make skiing slalom courses much much longer 
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Poster: A snowHead
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| snowdave wrote: |
| Mix in enough suffering and sleep deprivation and women start to outperform |
Yep, that's childbirth and breastfeeding practise! 
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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| snowdave wrote: |
| Maybe the answer for skiing is to make skiing slalom courses much much longer |
There is the Super Slalom at La Plagne - 320 gates. The last time it was held in 2019 the fastest male took 4:31, fastest female 5:02.
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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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@mogulski, when it comes to the jumping competitions such as half pipe, big air & slopestyle, why do the women do so much less complex jumps than the men? This is a genuine question, for once I’m not taking samples.
(I come from a background in which men & women compete on level terms every day of the week.)
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@rjs, impressive, but 5 mins isn’t exactly getting into sleep deprivation territory!
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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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@snowdave, The only way you would get up to endurance race durations is by doing multiple laps, there have been some "ski for 24 hours" events for fun/charity.
The Super Slalom may not have been a fair comparison, I'm not sure the male racers were taking the fancy dress as seriously as the women.
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@rjs, and make 'em walk the up.
Would be an interesting event. I'd watch. That probably means it's an extreme minority sport tho
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In Freestyle events the difficulty of the tricks or airs depends in part on the height you can achieve, more height and therefore air time, the more rotations you can do. Women tend to be smaller build and even when they do all the intensive training they do not develop muscles strong enough to get the height that men can get. The sport has developed a great deal while I have been judging. In the 1990s it was all upright airs (twisters, spread etc) and now in moguls Ikuma the top of the JPN team is doing a 1440 into the moguls. As a youngster he came to Manchester to compete in the indoor FIS moguls in 2014 which I was judging so I have watched his development. He has beaten Kingsbury a few times but so have the other 2 or 3 top men. One of the GBR male mogul skiers was 2nd in a world cup in 2020 and 6th in 2021 and his sister also got a 6th. The GBR freestyle skiers regularly get top 10 world cup results in all the freestyle events (moguls, slopestyle, ski cross, aerials, half pipe) but the media tends to focus on alpine skiing so teh public may not be so aware. I used to be very involved in monitoring performance and chaired the freestyle ski selection panel for the last Olympics but I have retired now so just an interested bystander.
As I said before in freestyle skiing and snowboarding men and women compete on the same courses in the same resorts but they do need to compete in single sex competitions. As the sport has developed both men and women have skied faster and jumped higher but the men always seem to be able to perform more complex airs than the women. Skis have also developed and there are specific mogul skis but again women tend to have shorter skis than men. I blew my ACL about 15 years ago trying to ski faster on longer skis to try to keep up with men I ski with!
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@snowdave, @rjs,
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/56720358
An interesting article on a mad endurance race. The pace is steady and the winner is the last person still going.
- Cantrell says picking a favourite edition of Big's is "like asking which is my favourite child", but seeing a woman win was special. "When you remove speed and strength from the equation, you have women competing head on with the men. Maggie and Courtney - they're just competitors."
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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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@Klamm Franzer, Looks like a great event!
It does support my theory that many sporting events have evolved in a "male dominated" fashion, such that men outperform women - not intentionally, but its been the result. If the world of sport had taken a different route, and attached similar value to events where the gender differences are smaller/absent (be it through balance, or endurance) rather than outright strength, then we might see a very different picture.
I realise the spectator interest in a 48hr football game might be limited
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@snowdave, In my case, spectator interest in a 48 minute football game would be limited! 
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