Men's GS in Cortina

[jbotti]

All ski racing fans should make sure they watch the replay of the GS at the WSC. If you can, make sure you watch the first run which was especially brutal. It was pretty mush solid blue ice the whole way down. It was eating up and spitting out the best skiers in the world over and over again. Pinturault's first run was one for the ages!!

For both runs this was a true championship race course. And the course won!!

[bartharb]

But Pinturault did not win the second manche . He missed the 7 th gate . Slided out .
I saw he swinged his left arm far backwards , alreadytwo gates (curve to the right) before he did that too a bit.

Comment on Swiss Italian tv was : because he swinged his arm backwards his upperbody was not going in to the curve...is this right ?

Someone has seen this ? and can comment on it, what happened and why he did it , maybe it was not the intention to swing his arm.

[bartharb]

Also on the same Swiss Italian TV there was some comment on the brand of skis , that the Rossignol skis did not perform as the others .... ??

[jbotti]

The root of all evil when skiing on ice is leaning in. On very steep terrain on ice all it takes is a slight lean in and one can easily lose the stance ski, and this appears to be what happened to Pinturault.

It did appear that Head skis were holding well, perhaps better than other brands on the ice in the GS. Having said that, there were several skiers on Head that skied out and lost their edge on the ice which reinforces that great equipment with poor technique will often still produce a poor result.

[dougtee]

"are you leaning in or out?" was never on my list of cues. seems so obvious but a light bulb for me.

[Dstumpf]

Jbotti, could you explain what you mean by leaning in on a turn means? Do you mean not enough cb?

[jbotti]

Yes. Using older terminology it is the difference between angulation (which has lots of CB) and inclination (which has none or very little). Leaning in gets higher edge angles quickly, but it comes with a price especially on ice.