Ok this is valid for your 2 posts and some other people's posts.
As much as chad's gap might be more impressive, fine. You are saying ski for the fun, not to "impress" people. There is a fine line making a distinction between "impressing" people, and "Getting more people to know about our sport".
Chad's gap is no where as accessible to the thousands of people that went into this ballpark, nor all the people that watched it on T.V.
There is the X-Games, but then, you have to have ESPN, and who watches ESPN? Sports fan.
In distinction to all that stuff, this event brougth thousands of people in San francisco. I don't think that these thousands of people were "Core newschoolers".
If you want the sport to grow, it needs more events like this, straigth in the city, never done before, to bring people to discover what this is up to. The sport doesnt revolved around Newschoolers.com, freeskier.com and magazine, and the 10+- ski movies comming out every year. Get ordinary people excited about your sport, it will benefit everyone.
About how sketchy it was, or unsafe, well, as everyone said, everyone had the right not to hit it. All of these athletes are professional, I do not think they would have hit something that would have put their season on ice if it was not safe enough. They would have made reccomendations to make it safer and then, done it. I guess the risks involved were not that much worst than the risk involved in every competitions, as part of the sport. This thread was started by an athlete saying that despite all of the "sketchy" side, it was a great event... this should ring a bell, she was up on the structure, not me, not you, SHE was, and she knows better than anyone who watched it, live or on Tv.