New FIS Ski Lengths: Stupidity Reigns. What's the Point?

Let's all enjoy some 40-meter radius GS skis!  And DH stackheights circa 1986.

As most of you have heard, these are the changes that FIS is set to make for ski dimensions over the next few years.  It's befuddling, to put it mildly.  Stupid, to say it factually.  At the very least, it's completely misguided.  It even defies discussion to a great extent.  Really, what is there to say?  It just leaves us sitting, wondering, "What?  Why?"

Who wants this?  Who asked for this?  Nobody.  The explanation for the new regulations lies with the desire of FIS to be progressive in its protection of athletes, and because they want to do what they can to avoid being responsible for some hypothetical pandemic of injuries.  That's the European way.

Car racing, sailboat racing, bicycle racing: they all have heavily regulated equipment specifications, all top-down regulations in the name of safety and fair play.  Car racing has huge safety concerns because of the incredible speeds and the proximity of spectators to the competition.  Sailboat racing has all manner of different classes and categories to keep it fair and to keep participants from being priced out of competition.  Bicycle racing has vestigial safety concerns, left over from an era when the desire to develop superlight alloy components outstripped manufacturers’ ability to make those components strong enough to be considered safe.  When your average speed over the ground is upwards of 150 miles an hour, or when the price of a junior racing boat could range into six figures, or when a broken wheel or bike frame can endanger the health and well-being of hundreds of athletes at once, you have a problem on your hands.

Ski racing does not face those kinds of equipment concerns, at least not with regard to safety (cost is a different issue.)  The new FIS regulations amount to a statement that skis, as we use them now, are dangerous.  Paradoxically, we already know this to be both true and untrue.  Is skiing dangerous?  Yes.  Is skiing too dangerous?  No.

Many people do consider speed events to be too dangerous, especially for certain ages and abilities.  But I doubt very much that those people would ascribe that “too dangerous” label to anything equipment related.  Why is Downhill dangerous?  Make a top-10 list and see if standheight or ski width makes the cut, or even factors into the discussion.  But FIS, in the classical European Big Brother way, claims to know something we don’t.  They say they have data that proves that ski lengths, widths, and standheights are leading us through an injury epidemic, although nobody on this side of the curtain seems to have ever seen any such data.  We know what we see everyday, and we assume a pretty well established level of risk when we ski.  Sometimes we pay the price, but it is a rare person for whom that risk is too great.

This entire subject raises a question that we are facing as a national ski racing community: What can you do about it?  The answer is, unfortunately, probably nothing.  FIS probably doesn’t care what you have to say, and it’s not like we’re going to stop showing up to races just because we don’t like the skis.  Right?

Well, maybe.  You have to think that if FIS gets enough feedback from enough of us, something might change.  The manufacturers have raised their voices already, and certainly there are rumblings of discontent from those on the ground, but will FIS listen?  History suggests that sports governing bodies, maintaining the monopolies that they do, are not inclined to proceed with anything but their own agenda, a concept that is entirely un-American but holds true even (especially?) in this country.  You have no congressman to write to, no representative to call.  What will you do?

And yes, we will continue to show up.  The length of the skis may drive a few people out of the sport because, let’s face it, it won’t feel as good.  But really, the things that will drive people away from the sport are things like the incredibly high financial cost, not the buzz you're missing as you hammer the apex.

Here are some questions that we would have preferred FIS answer instead:

1. Are ski dimensions really the safety agenda item causing us the most harm?  Is that what makes this sport dangerous?
2. What will FIS do to address the rising cost of involvement in our sport?  Many individuals have already been priced out of competition, and even more are sure to come in the future, and yet FIS has done nothing to mitigate these costs.
3. What about helmet design?  You don’t see these guys rocking open-face helmets with a half-inch of padding (watch the whole video, it is time well spent.)  FIS doesn’t see this as a problem.  Their logic is that a head injury is caused by a fall, which is caused by ski dimensions.  The truth is that a head injury is caused by too hard of an impact with the ground, which needs to be directly mitigated by a more adequate helmet.
4. What about venue protection and safety?  Is b-net really the best answer that we can come up with?  Not only does it barely contain many crashes, but it’s also decimating ski club budgets left and right, and the manpower involved in setting up a safe venue is preventing many of the best locations from hosting as many races as they might want to.  FIS has failed, utterly, to address this.
5. How about actual binding safety testing and regulations?  DIN settings are supposed to be standard across brands, but anyone who has worked with the different platforms available knows that they aren’t the same.  A Marker set on 14 is not the same as an Atomic set on 14, which is not the same as a Look 14, which is not the same as a Tyrolia 14.  Couldn’t we just as easily blame our safety troubles on bindings?

These new regulations are ridiculous and completely arcane.  Frankly, they do nothing to address the real safety issues that we face in our sport.  It’s 2011.  Neither binding nor helmet technology in our sport have really evolved at all in about 30 years, and fencing has only evolved into "bigger and more."  But FIS says that longer, less responsive, more ungainly skis are the answer.  It’s a shame that they have wasted so much time and energy on this project when, in fact, we have much bigger concerns that have gone completely unaddressed. 

How to make this point to FIS?  We’d like to hear your suggestions in the comments.

In the meantime, pop on over to Facebook and hang around with this group, though you’ll have a tough time with anonymity, if that matters to you.

Also, here’s the protest letter from the ski manufacturers.  It’s signed by Michael Schineis (sorry, that’s DR. Michael Schineis), president of Atomic Austria and president of Winter Sports Equipment at AmerSports, which also controls Salomon.  Also signed by Franz Foettinger (CEO of Fischer), Klaus Hotter (executive VP of winter sports at Head), Jonathan Wiant (Managing director at Völkl/Marker), Reto Rindlisbacher (Managing director at Nordica, formerly at Völkl), Bruno Cercley (CEO of Rossignol), and Beni Stöckli (CEO of, you guessed it, Stöckli).  The scribes appear to have misspelled Stöckli’s name on the letter.

In the letter, they say that a GS ski with a 40-meter radius “is bringing the GS skis twenty years back.”  They suggest a 35-meter radius, “Given the limited impact of the difference between 35m and 40m shown in the tests,” which also suggests that the manufacturers have seen the data that we have not.  And they state, rightly so, that “equipment specifications are by far not the most relevant factor in connection with safety… The ski manufacturers note with regret that…so far at least, no other concrete measures seem to be forthcoming.”

Enjoy the letter below, or you can download it here.  You can download the above equipment spec sheet here.

And seriously, don't shortchange yourself on this caliber of sporting entertainment:

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