In Part I of my 2020 State of the Ski Market Revelation, I describe how the influence of ski width, deep sidecuts, rockered baselines and tapered tips and tails have dumbed down skis to the point where skills development is treated as optional. The crowning...
Since the early 1990’s, the overarching objective of non-race ski design has been to abbreviate the learning curve. Mission accomplished. These are the seven most influential factors driving modern ski design. Fatness – By using girth as a guide to model selection,...
Once upon a time, the Alpine ski market was relatively homogenous. Racing was the sole paradigm of excellence and race ski clones populated every product line. Everyone’s collection put race skis on a pedestal, made lower-cost spin-offs for the masses in the middle of...
The only foolproof way to protect your knees when skiing is to stay home. But there are some things you can do to mitigate your risk of knee injury, starting with… Learn to ski better. Knee injuries are positional in nature. Skiers who start with a balanced stance and...
In his introduction to an overview of current research on the effects of wide skis, Prof. John Seifert of Montana State University explains two fundamental ways that wide skis expose the knee to injury. (We’ll get into the mysteries of just how wide is “wide” and...
