 Poster: A snowHead
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easiski, Men do also seem to enjoy the feeling of speed more, but they should do it on an empty piste and still make sure that they can actually stop/slow down if blind corners/other skiers etc come into view.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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I assume that men are faster skiers, this must be a factor of weight and general overall strength. If there was no difference of the sexes then surely men and women would compete together in skiing (as they do in riding horses for example). In skiing however, they don't. However, I don't think that faster necessarily equals better. This doesn't help the debate I'm just thinking outloud - Sorry.
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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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'Fast' isn't the same as 'good', although it's true that men tend to confuse the two in more than one context.
Skiing is one example. Sex is another. 
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Lizzard, I assume that we won't fall out if I actually agree with you 
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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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| Lizzard wrote: |
'Fast' isn't the same as 'good', although it's true that men tend to confuse the two in more than one context.
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Yes, I'm sure that often happens. But to be truly fast (as opposed to simple letting gravity take you down the hill in a fairly straight line) you need to be better than good. A good fast skier (of either sex) is a joy to watch. A bad fast skier is best watched from a distance.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
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Not having enough patience to read through the whole 3 pages, I still got the impression that:
even if women are "technically better", which is still being debated, it's not they "naturally" are so!
It maybe they have to due to lack of strength or such to be "technically better" to make up for it. There's nothing "naturally" about them being "better", if at all.
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comprex,
People can possess natural ability, I don't think anyone would disagree with this, whether this is determined by deep instints and intuition or fairly a recent genetic predisposition I do not know.
People with or without natural ability can and will improve from analytical thought and external training and again I don't think anyone would question this.
..... but skilled force is intuitive because if you train 2 people from scratch I believe the one who has a natural ability or can intuitively pick up the skill will perform better.
Also intuition maybe physically driven rather than mentally so, i.e. if your body is designed for a sport such as michael phelps the swimmer maybe it is this which allows him from a young age to take to swimming rather than a deep seated mental understanding of the philosophy behind aquatic motion!
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| abc wrote: |
| Not having enough patience to read |
abc are you a man or a woman? 
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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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This is an incredibly sexist thread. So I should have more patience for being a woman?
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I think there's some merit in the initial argument, even if I wouldn't necessarily agree with the basic premise.
Stand by for gross generalisations. Women do tend to make more attentive students in my experience. They also have a natural body disposition advantage in that proportionally more of their weight/muscle is hips down. Men tend to have greater upper body development and all round strength. I've been guilty of muscling my way through situations and throwing my upper body around. In some ways that's useful because you can get the experience and survive, hopefully to get it right next time. Women on the other hand would have to rely more on technique, as they don't have the same 'muscle it' option.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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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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Maybe the question is too general. Why not particularise it?
Who is the "better" skier? - Bode Miller or Janica Kostelic?
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You know it makes sense.
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Acacia, I did't intend to include Competitive Skiers in my question - but since you mention these two greats...
This is what Bode Miller has to say about his sucess: "I don't master the mountain, I master speed."
And this what Spela Pretnar has to say about Janica Kostelic's success: "Janica is a very soft skier, her softness of skiing is special. She has an excellent feeling for the skis and she always attacks the track. She has a great rhythm from the beginning to the end of the track. One no other skier can stand."
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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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| Blade wrote: |
Acacia, I did't intend to include Competitive Skiers in my question - but since you mention these two greats...
This is what Bode Miller has to say about his sucess: "I don't master the mountain, I master speed."
And this what Spela Pretnar has to say about Janica Kostelic's success: "Janica is a very soft skier, her softness of skiing is special. She has an excellent feeling for the skis and she always attacks the track. She has a great rhythm from the beginning to the end of the track. One no other skier can stand." |
One up for the girls then 
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Poster: A snowHead
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spyderjon, interesting... Male: 8 words. Female: 46 words. Anything in that?
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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| Quote: |
Acacia, I did't intend to include Competitive Skiers in my question - but since you mention these two greats...
This is what Bode Miller has to say about his sucess: "I don't master the mountain, I master speed."
And this what Spela Pretnar has to say about Janica Kostelic's success: "Janica is a very soft skier, her softness of skiing is special. She has an excellent feeling for the skis and she always attacks the track. She has a great rhythm from the beginning to the end of the track. One no other skier can stand."
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And what this tells you is, that at any level, there are so many ways of defining "good" skiing that asking whether someone is naturally "better" than someone else is a rather artificial question.
Like the man says - "The best skier is the one with the biggest smile"
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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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| Quote: |
"The best skier is the one with the biggest smile"
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Acacia, the question is no more artificial than your above statement.
Anyway, I'm going to jump off the fence now.
last season I skied with a ski club rep 3 times in 3 resorts. In all those meetings the groups were of mixed age and mixed gender. The quota of male/female skiers about 6 - 4. Nethertheless, on each of those meetings we had one female skier that posed far more aggression, far more competitiveness, and far more recklessness than our most dangerous male skier in our groups. Our first group (January), was billed as an intermediate day, which meant it was going to be a fairly slow and relaxed day. Yet we had a young female (teenager) who insisted in muscling her way to the front of the group on every run, irrespective of how tiny the gap was between the leading skier and the back of the ski rep.Somehow, she would always manage to squeeze herself in that gap but sadly to the detriment of the safety and well being of her fellow skiers and of course, herself. She had no direction, no cohesion, and no idea. Her head was thrust down like a charging bull, her ski jacket was open and flapping wildly and her ski boots were half buckled. The next day I didn't join the ski rep, but that evening I mentioned her to him. He told me that she had to be admitted to hospital for a splintered shinbone that afternoon.
The second meeting (february) was to be an advanced group. It was going to be steep and deep day. The female in question, in her 40's, joined the group with her husband. They both were very experienced skiers.For the rest of that day, apart from lunchtime, her hubby didn't exist. She was too busy competing shoulder to shoulder with the front (male) markers including Le Face in Val and The Wall in Tignes, but this time it was only her own safety that was compromised going by the endless wipeouts she suffered.
Is your graceful, stylish and demure recreational female skier gradually being taken over by a new phenomenon: The aggressively competitive, unstylish female recreational skier? I wonder...
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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| Quote: |
"The best skier is the one with the biggest smile" Mon Jun 18, 2007 7:23 pm
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Not my statement. I think it was Ryan's tagline on Epic.
Makes a lot of sense though!
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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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[quote="Blade"]
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| Is your graceful, stylish and demure recreational female skier gradually being taken over by a new phenomenon: The aggressively competitive, unstylish female recreational skier? I wonder... |
No. They fancied the skireps.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
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| Acacia wrote: |
| Quote: |
"The best skier is the one with the biggest smile" Mon Jun 18, 2007 7:23 pm
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Not my statement. I think it was Ryan's tagline on Epic.
Makes a lot of sense though! |
Sorry but that statement is the most arrant, trite, nonsensical BS - and my respect for anyone who spouts it immediately drops several notches. It probably (but not necessarily) though applies to the skier who's enjoying their skiing the most, irrespective of whether they've just won the Derby de la Meije, or successfully pulled off their first parallel turn (and fortunately I can still remember that amazing feeling - the latter case, I hasten to add).
To answer the original question you need to define what constitutes a better skier, and then whether women or men are naturally better suited to getting to the top. In my book the best skiers are those who can take the most difficult lines down a mountain, or make the tightest and fastest turns - things like that. There are very few objective measurements of ability in those cases other than times down a race course (either in FIS style racing or something of the Red Bull style). There is another measure which is how gentle you are on the environment with your skis - i.e. some will manage to float over an avalanche prone slope without setting anything off by their sensitivity to the snow whereas others will set off the slide - but I guess there would be a few objections to staging competitions to test this . Whether a good skier is also a considerate skier is also a different matter.
On snow, women and men normally have separate competitions (at least those we get to hear about) so it's not so easy to establish comparitive abilities down the course. The local/national dry-slope competitions though do provided mixed sex competitions down the same courses, although the results are presented separately. My only experience to date of this, at a national level, is a recent race at Welwyn. There was a technical section in the middle of the course that separated the field pretty clearly; the visually better skiers managed to take the corners at speeds that left the less technically able of us heading in straight lines. Unfortunately I didn't get to see many of the females skiing (as I was waiting to come down the slope shortly after their best skiers) but I got a good look at the better male skiers. There seemed to be several groupings. The top two were clearly in a class above the rest, and got down in almost exactly 10 seconds. The next group were the top 15 or so males, who's technical ability at edge holding got them through that technical section with good style, but not quite the same speeds - taking something like 10.4-11 seconds. Then came the main grouping who mostly got down in 11-13 seconds, merging into the rest of us merely reasonable skiers at 13+ seconds. Someone coming down at 11.5 seconds needed noticeably less technically capability than someone making 10.5 seconds - and there were many who tried getting down at those kinds of speeds who didn't have the technical control to hold it through those tricky corners.
So where did the females come? The winners came down in about 11.5 seconds - i.e. at the head of the male also-rans, the grouping who needed noticably less good technique (although that is still mostly out of range of even very good recreational skiers) to get round the course at higher speeds. The winner - again fairly clear of the rest of the field, who is currently ranked about 5th in the country would just about make the top 50 of the males' ranking.
Now this is just an example of the points that were made above of skiing requiring both skill and strength - and as a group men are clearly stronger than women. Is that the case for children though? Looking at the regional races where there are more younger kids skiing, the 9-13yo boys are consistently faster than the girls. Not sure how much water this example holds though, as these agegroups are generally skiing at a lower technical level, and bravado can get you a fair way - but the better technicians certainly win (and there are certainly female technical specialists, such as a 12-13yo girl currently in the England development squad who is a delight to watch).
As to whether men or women are naturally better? Strength is as much a natural element as technical capability, so even if strength is necessarily included in the equation then I would argue that men ARE naturally better than women. You cannot get to be a truly high level skier without using both. At lower levels it's probably true than man can get there either through the routes of strength or technique, whereas women probably have to concentrate on the latter.
That quote from Bode really shouldn't surprise anyone - I don't think anyone has ever suggested Bode got where he is (was?) by subtle application of technique. Do remember that not all male skiers take his route though.
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