MikeWeinerONEThis has nothing to do with how good you are at skiing. Athleticism and skill, which are earned through repetition and actually skiing, are most important. Go figure.
Right - but I mean you're leaving out an important detail...
"actually skiing"
The ability to develop the baseline of actually going skiing from a young age requires your parents to possess an enormous amount of money - plain and simple.
Sure there are special cases where someone comes from a different background, but between equipment, season passes, transportation and simply having the time.... you need a decent economic stature to make it happen.
Like if both your parents worked at McDonalds, there's zero way you're going to become a skier.
If you are a lower-middle class family in Quebec... sure you can get skiing at a small hill with low-end equipment. You could even get decent. However, as soon as you hit the level where you need summer camps, trips to NZ, coaching fees and to attend major events all over North America?
No way mom and Dad can foot that bill, and no way even if you're pretty heavily sponsored is that travel getting covered.
So sure - there is probably a few cinderella stories out there of kids with the natural ability climbing over these hurdles and succeeding on their own.... but a lot of the time if Mom and Dad aren't footing a pretty serious bill for most of your youth, you're not going to have the training necessary to succeed.
Especially now with how hard the tricks have gotten. Summer camps, airbags, coach's salaries.... these things aren't cheap and in many countries the government doesn't even subsidize them.
