Skiers don't have any control.

It has become pretty clear that this year especially skiers don't have any control over their status with a company. It's all about to change with Armada I hope, but the past two years have been a junk show for treatment.

In many other sports the athlete says jump and the sponsor says how high. This is the case with a few athletes, but not many in skiing. The trickle down for a lot of other sports is way larger. Why?? I honestly don't know, maybe people just don't give a fuck about skiing? Maybe the market research is that this 'revolution' is a fad. I hope thats not the way it is, I know I'm gonna keep doing it.

The usual excuse from a sponsor is 'budget cuts' or some other similar money bullshit line. Why are there so many 'budget' cuts in a sport that is aparently booming at an exponential rate. For the first time in years whistler/blackcomb season passes were at more skiers than snowboarders. Clearly the sport really is growing, each one of those people has to buy equipment at one point or another. The money MUST be there. Is it all a ploy to keep control and scrape dollars here and there? who knows, but as long as people are informed that athletes deserve better treatment and deserve not to be the objects that they maintimes are...we can make this work.

Here are a couple cases which stand out.

Chris Turpin had a good season wouldnt you say? wsi champion (everyone knows this), us open finalist, featured in volume stereotype, article in freeze tons of published shots a million other things. You would think someone that gets that kind of publicity and essentially thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars for a company would have a fairly solid place there. As you all know this is not the case. Turpin got injured and miraculously line's 'budget' was cut.

Another athlete whom I will not mention had a very good relationship with the biggest company in eyewear and getting bigger in clothing ( you take a guess who) and this person got an offer from another company of 5 TIMES what that original company offered for that season. This person really liked their original company and gave them the opourtunity to counter offer and said that they would sign if they offered half of what the other company offered. Since this company felt so big, they wouldn't do it. this person now has a new eyewear sponsor and is in my opinion a major loss for the first company.

These two members of the freesking community are at the very top I assure you, and yet none of them are safe. I don't think we even need to talk about the way mike douglas was messed around with.

So what do we need? We need more Armada's. We need more companies in general that aren't out to make the biggest dollar but are making stuff because they like what they are doing. It will be interesting to see how the season goes for Armada and how the attitudes change when the skiers stop taking this bullshit.
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'I don't know why I come to this fucking place, the kids are such assholes' - Anthony B