Denver Post says we're not progressing

Lack of personality mars image of Freeskiing Open

Scott Willoughby
Special to The Denver Post

For seven years now, I've been waiting for the U.S. Freeskiing Open to go Big Time. It has all the fundamental ingredients: Big Air, Big Names and Big Money. Unfortunately, to date all that seems to add up to is Big Attitude.
Not that I'm entirely against attitude, so long as it has some personality to go along with it. But the glaring lack of genuine personality among the upper echelon of the freeskiing movement might very well become its undoing.
Several years ago, larger-than-life NBA personality Charles Barkley made headlines with the proclamation that he wasn't interested in being anyone's role model. It was summarily explained to him that the statement was made too late. The choice no longer was his to make. He since has come around.

Someone needs to similarly enlighten the young hotshots currently driving the freeskiing 'revolution.' The estimated 30,000 grommets annually buying into the twin-tipped jibber market are looking at folks like Tanner Hall - recently dubbed 'The Air Apparent' of the sport by Freeskiing Open producers Freeze magazine - for direction. But as far as I can tell, they're just spinning their wheels.

The U.S. Freeskiing Open claims to exist for two reasons. First, 'to allow any and all who come to put up or shut up.' Second, 'to provide a venue for the sport's boundaries to be blown to pieces ... to continue to set bench marks for the sport of jibbing.'

But now that the sport has achieved national recognition at events such as the Winter X Games, the U.S. Freeskiing Open and its participants seem less interested in advancing their cause on the slopes and more inclined toward hosting a private party promoting a punk image with some skiing on the side. That could explain the daily two-hour schedule delays in competition, the slide from last year's Fox Sports telecast to the Open's debut on Spike TV this year, and the drop in attendance at Saturday night's big air competition to maybe half the 7,000 fans who showed up at the base of Vail Mountain in 2003. Despite Hall's title as 'Air,' freeskiing doesn't have a Michael Jordan to carry it.

Instead, the Vail Daily newspaper ran a Saturday morning cover photo of Hall griping about judging in the slopestyle competition, in which he finished fourth. Then organizers griped about the photo. Meanwhile, Vail Police Sgt. Kurt Mulson attributed a doubling of his department's Friday night arrest average to the crowd of young spectators in town for the Freeskiing Open and a corresponding concert.

While some of those gripes may be justified, and not all of those 12 arrests can be traced directly to the competition, a little bearing check appears suddenly overdue. Is that really the image that will carry freeskiing into the future?

The slogan for Hall's title ski sponsor, Armada, is 'What Skiing Will Become.' I'm fairly certain it's a reference to the amazing stunts these athletes perform on the skis, but given freeskiing's prevailing image, Armada might consider branching out into snowboards. I missed the portion of the X Games where a snowboarder flipped double-barrel fingers at the camera after blowing his line in slopestyle or used profanity to describe a winning run on live television. The skiers who pulled those stunts, on the other hand, are enough to make Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson look cool.

Punk has been in style since Sid and Nancy and long before the inspiration of the K2 Seth Pistol. But, of course, Sid Vicious overdosed at Hall's age in '79 and, in my opinion, Seth Morrison has been setting the standard for new schoolers since before anyone in Tanner's 'C-Crew' uncorked his first 900. But nobody has seen Morrison hanging around the Freeskiing Open for a while.

Wonder why.

I've known the folks who pull this event together for years, and, honestly fellas, I'm not trying to bag on it. I understand the spirit in which the Freeskiing Open was created, the work that has gone into it, and the desire to build the 'scene' surrounding it. But if you're sincere in your desire 'to continue to set bench marks for the sport of jibbing,' it's time for someone to step up.

Seven years seems like a lot of time to take it to the next level. And while the Freeskiing Open has come a long way since the athletes had to build their own kickers back in the day, any strides in recent history have been negligible. It's time to inject some genuine personality into the attitude, along with a little industry-aided organization.