Mr. Meyer,
When I read your article full of half facts and assumptions, I couldn't resist contacting you. Your hypocricy is so blatently obnoxious, that it made me question your intellegnce. You write an entire newspaper article about how racing is becoming under appreciated, and disrespected by the 'hip' freeskiers of today, then go forth and disrespect newschool skiers everywhere by making ignornt genralizations such as, 'A lot of kids are doing tricks in halfpipes, congratulating themselves on how hip and brave they are-'. You also included Mr. Ralves comments: '-jumping on rails to me is more like Rollerblades. It's not skiing.' and, '-it's the same thing over and over again.' How can people take your want for renewed interest and respect towards gate chasing seriously, when you go right ahead and offend the fast growing (much faster then racing) sport of freeskiing, and its athletes. And still you go and misinform your readers by making up bullshit such as, 'Hall is upset because Bode Miller makes more endorsement money than he does, so he ridicules ski racing.' The one thing that rubbed me the wrong way more then anything else in your article was what was said in your article regarding newschool skiing being '-the same thing over and over again.' Is this a joke? How can someone say that a sport that involves terrain parks (tabletops, hips, quaterpipes, rails, boxes, ect), backcountry riding (lines, cliffs, booters, powder, ect), urban settings (handrails, ledges, drops, gaps, ect), is repetetive. When all of which are home to an extremely wide variety of technical, highly skilled tricks. All of that compared to racing, which dosn't seem to have much variety besides different coloured gates (yes, I know there's more to it than that). I'm sure Tanner understands the skill involved with racing, as he did it for a number of years in his youth, until he realized what thousands of others have: there is more to skiing then the restrictive sport of racing. Yes, racing takes skill. Yes, freeskiing takes skill. So please, I hope you can be man enough to apologize for you ignorant comments. I hope you and your kids have fun watching the races, I know I wouldn't.
-Nik Lauder (ace@newschoolers.com)
G-Kids