Member of the Month

hi_vis360
November, 2024

Online

Welcome to the Newschoolers forums! You may read the forums as a guest, however you must be a registered member to post. Register to become a member today!

The Olympics and Snow-sport Stereotypes

profile picture
Rem-Dog
Posts: 264 - Karma: 1,131
I'm hoping that the new disciplines of slopestyle and halfpipe for the 2014 Sochi Olympics in Russia takes the lime light away from snowboarding or allows the two sports to share the lime light. I'm sick of the stupid stereotypes makes the general public associate snow parks purely with snowboarders, don't get me wrong I have nothing against snow boarders. I just feel skiers get associated with racing and snowboarding is the 'cool' sport in mainstream media. I'm a ski instructor myself and the vast amounts of people that tell me they want to start snowboarding once they have learnt to ski and I find myself having to sell the sport telling them that skiing is just as 'cool' if not more than snowboarding. Personally I think us skiers have something to show in and the Olympics in February is going to be a game changer for peoples opinions on skiing. Most people I know were oblivious to the fact that skiing exists in the slopestyle and halfpipe discipline. Please discuss.
Nov 18 2013 5:05AM
6 0
profile picture
MLJ
Posts: 1849 - Karma: 3,649
In my opinion, this is exactly the problem. People are stuck with this view of skiing from 10 years ago, but the constantly increasing coverage of skiing is good, and I think that despite all of the hate threads recently the olympics will be great for the sport as a whole.

If you think about it, if there were 10x as many people doing freestyle skiing ski companies would be 10x bigger and there would be more money going into movies, awesome parks and better technology for skis. An increasing consumer is never a problem for the consumer, although would definitely increase the competition between companies and would make starting a new company much more difficult.

Kind of off track but thought it fit here nicely.
Nov 18 2013 5:20AM
2 0
profile picture
PeppermillReno
Posts: 4814 - Karma: -707
SKis are better for going extremely fast on than boards so naturally its more popular when it comes to racing.  Boarders beat skiiers to the park and the sport was built on park/pipe not going faster than another dude.

THe best you can ever hope for freeskiing in terms of popularity as an olympic sport is to replace freestyle and be about as popular as moguls are. 


Nov 18 2013 6:05AM
0 0
profile picture
Mrlysenko
Posts: 77 - Karma: 12
This is soo true. I spent couple years instructing out in Aus. the majority of people out there have no clue about skiings freestyle aspects and because there culture has got alot of board sports already like skate and surfing they dont even think twice about skiing and find that Snowboarding is the cool sport. as OP says I really hope it shows the mainsteam people that freestyle skiing exists and is as amazing but then I dont like that skiing is kinda not known about always a great feeling when people who dont know freestyle skiing exists sees someone doing it.
Nov 18 2013 6:11AM
1 0
profile picture
LeChat
Posts: 43 - Karma: 426
The problen I see :
-1 millions of gaper in front of their tv wathing the olympics and saying "hey, i wanna jump with my ski too !"
-a shit load of gapers (and by 'gaers' I don't mean beginners, everyone have to begin once, and you can do it with respect and intelligence) invading parks without knowing anything, direspectfull kids and other family who want to do 'just like we see on tv'
-me getting bored

OP : I just don't care what people think about freeski, do it, like it, be stoked and let other people believe whatever they want...
Nov 18 2013 7:30AM
1 0
All times are Eastern (-5)