Oh dear…

Lars Engebretsen, head of scientific activities at the IOC’s medical and scientific department, said injury rates in slopestyle, where skiers and boarders did flips, spins and jumps on a hair-raising course of humps and obstacles, were “much higher than any other sport in Sochi.”

…

Engebretsen was speaking on the sidelines of a conference on sports injuries. In an address to the conference, he described slopestyle as “problematic” and said: “Something has to be done with that sport.”

…

“Slopestyle is exciting. But it’s just become, right now anyway, too exciting.”

Source: http://www.ctvnews.ca/sports/olympic-slopestyle-produced-unacceptable-number-of-injuries-1.1773531

Excellent – hopefully future Winter Olympics can drop all that crowd-pleasing exciting stuff and get back to endless hours of cross-country skiing.

Judging by some of the comments from competitor’s the courses were the most dangerous thing, and the piss poor snow. Might help holding it somewhere colder and with better course designs.

Not really sure how I feel about this. As I watched The Crash Reel last night, and there did seem to be something in certain sports veering off into increased risks, 22ft pipe walls in the case of snowboarding, purely for entertainment purposes. Which is great, but is it worth it if the risks of injury, or deaths, are increased substantially?

Let’s not forget that rallying had to be put on a leash to stop people killing themselves. Yes it might not be as exciting, but they are not burying a driver every other week.

There was a very good article a while back concerning Rampage and the need to give greater consideration to rider safety. I while heatedly agree. I’m all for watching a few spills but seeing one athlete after another stretchered off did make me wonder. Snow conditions didn’t help either.

Oh, and fwiw, if it requires subjective scoring it’s not a sport and has no place in the Olympics anyway.

GrahamS – Member

Excellent – hopefully future Winter Olympics can drop all that crowd-pleasing exciting stuff and get back to endless hours of cross-country skiing curling…

(mind you, as a man of a certain age with a back made of biscuits i can’t watch curling; it’s too unsettling watching people walk around on ice like that)

But skeleton, luge and bobsleigh (where people have been paralysed or killed in the past) are apparently fine though??

Don’t forget that ultra safe event called ‘Downhill skiing’.

GrahamS – Member
But skeleton, luge and bobsleigh (where people have been paralysed or killed in the past) are apparently fine though??

Yeah but they haven’t started putting loop-da-loops in to the courses as yet. It’s about speed not exciting “artistic” elements.

22ft pipe walls were brought in partly for safety reasons – bigger means smoother transitions and easier to handle, and more margin for error – longer section of vert at the top means you’re directed up for longer and more likely to have a trajectory that lands you at the top of the transition. And if you mess up by a few feet, you’ve on a steeper part of the transition when you land, rather in the flat bottom.

Course, there’s an element of risk compensation – people will feel safer so up the ante.

Meh. Slope style didn’t do much for me as a sport – but then again I can’t abide ‘sports’ with judges scoring. Call me an old traditionalist but sports are way better when its first across the line, fastest, furthest etc. As soon as you start talking about amplitude as a way of placing medals (without really measuring it apart from on the sick rating) I’ve lost interest.

Skier-X and boardercross is where its at.

Yeah but they haven’t started putting loop-da-loops in to the courses as yet. It’s about speed not exciting “artistic” elements.

I’m not sure why that makes it okay?

Are you saying it’s somehow more acceptable for people to get injured or killed when competing in speed-based sports?

best thing about it imo.

I guess im in the minority but i found the cross country skiing far more exciting to watch than the slopestyle events.

Epic battles, head to head, tactics with the fastest skier wins – often with the competitors collapsing in exhaustion as soon as they made it over the finish line. The womens relay event in particular was competitive sport at its finest and (for my taste at least) was more exciting than seeing someone (no matter how talented) do some tricks then making faces at the camera and trying to look rad while the judges do the scoring.

Assuming the competitors are happy to turn up and race, rock on! (IMO)

I don’t know much about the sport, but it did seem to me that on at least one of the Sochi slopestyle events that I watched they were really struggling to get enough speed to clear the jumps, presumably due to rubbish snow. Sure enough, one of the competitors came up very short and ended up in hospital.

Competitors are very unlikely to hold back in the name of safety in an Olympic final, so it seems to me that the organisers need to take greater responsibility for ensuring that risks are kept under control.

http://sochi2014.rbth.ru/sochi_slopestyle_course_adjusted_as_competition_begins
http://www.smh.com.au/sport/winter-olympics/american-snowboarder-shaun-white-pulls-out-of-intimidating-olympic-slopestyle-contest-20140206-3226e.html
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-02-04/snowboarding-course-changes-after-star-crashes-out/5236478

A bunch did raise issues and there were changes to the course due to some of the jumps not being designed very well. Same point as above – people did raise concerns.

Assuming the competitors are happy to turn up and race, rock on! (IMO)

What about if the competitors aren’t “happy” to race, but the event is going ahead and it’s all that they’ve been working for for the last 4 years, so are damned if they’re not going to give it their best shot?

What about if the competitors aren’t “happy” to race, but the event is going ahead and it’s all that they’ve been working for for the last 4 years, so are damned if they’re not going to give it their best shot?

Don’t be soft, if your Olympic standard they you will want to be pushing the boundaries, if some one has the balls to do it, then you can guarantee some one will want to beat them.

The stuff that nearly kills you is the stuff that gives you the biggest kicks.

if your (sic) Olympic standard they you will want to be pushing the boundaries

This guy ‘might’ be considered olympic standard

Though I acknowledge he withdrew in part to protect himself from damage as to not endanger his half pipe (favoured event) defence.

Possibly not, but maybe they should have picked a route you are allowed to cycle on as a Sustran route. Just a thought like….

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, eh?
I guess the excercises to improve your upper-body strength after breaking your back could count…

Why stop at the Olympics? What about the X-Games, Air & Style comps etc etc. ? What makes the Winter Olympics so special that it has to “protect” these athletes?

Don’t be soft, if your Olympic standard they you will want to be pushing the boundaries, if some one has the balls to do it, then you can guarantee some one will want to beat them.

So are you saying that there is no course which you would consider to be too dangerous to run a competition on?

Or that the decision about whether a course is safe or not to compete on can be left entirely to the competitors?

GrahamS – Member

Are you saying it’s somehow more acceptable for people to get injured or killed when competing in speed-based sports?

IMO in comparison to being able to do a pretty twirl in the air or slide faster then yes.

If they took out all the sports where someone had died then it’d pretty much only be ice dancing left.

only be ice dancing left…

[video]http://youtu.be/elJ3v3Szrs4[/video]

(could ‘appen!)

IMO in comparison to being able to do a pretty twirl in the air or slide faster then yes.

Well, that’s an interesting value judgement. 😕

If they took out all the sports where someone had died then it’d pretty much only be ice dancing left.

Ah yes… ice dancing…

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7dr6PCeW4c[/video]

The stuff they do in competition will be tame compared to what they do when larking about or training. People who do these types of sport get a kick from the danger, make it dull and they would move on to something else.

The stuff they do in competition will be take compared to what they do when larking about or training.

You’re saying that you think in competition there’s no extra pressure to attempt a course compared to doing it in training? Really?

So you’re saying “yes” to both of my questions? There’s no course that you’d consider too dangerous to run a competition on, and that the decision about whether a course is safe or not to compete on can be left entirely to the competitors?

Le Mans
Formula 1 in the 60s
Group B rallying with unlimited spectator access.
Extreme mountaineering “enchainements”
Base jumping

They’ve all gone through a media/marketing-driven escalation. Some have been toned down and made a little safer. My son does ski cross in u16 (all four French cup wins this season and fourth in the national championships). I hope for my son’s sake the escalation stops and a little more thought is given to making courses safer. The size of the stuff in Sochi bothered us, it was simply bigger than European Cup and World Cup courses.

My son does ski cross in u16 (all four French cup wins this season and fourth in the national championships)

Lucky lad, it didn’t exist in my day (genuinely wish it had!), you just had to make do with hurtling down a piste at 70 mph + and flying through the air for 20-40m, ah the good old days.

I bet he doesn’t tell you half the stuff he gets up to when they are just messing around before/after/around training sessions. ie jumping off cliffs, down couloirs, jumping off the roof of buildings. 😀

The size of the stuff in Sochi bothered us, it was simply bigger than European Cup and World Cup courses.

Yep and as most people said badly built, wrong and on crap snow. Though as that is the actual explanation everyone is bunging fingers in their ears.

Could just be that as it’s a complicated and challenging event to put on, and they have a ton of other events to run too, doing it competently and safely is too big an ask.

I avoid anything to do with the Redbull Rampage. At somepoint it will end in a lifelong disability or death so I dont want to patronage it.

Yes it might happen in DH however the stuff that riders are having to pull of on the Rampage just to be on the same page let alone the podium is ridiculous. The ‘rewards’ aren’t enough for the riders either.

I bet all competitors have to sign a huge disclaimer to the title sponsors.

Putting rampage into the FMB was a step too far imo- put more pressure on people to enter. Other than that it’s very much a personal choice, just look at Kirill Churbanov walking away from it before qualifying, or Gee Atherton doing one finals run and saying “job done”. Certainly nobody is at rampage that isn’t capable of doing it.

OTOH Rampage has a better safety record than the downhill world cup…

Yep and as most people said badly built, wrong and on crap snow. Though as that is the actual explanation everyone is bunging fingers in their ears.

agreed

That’s exactly the problem. The organisers wanted to put on a show, wanted the Olympics to be “special”, probably had discussion about courses and jumps that “demanded respect” and decided to make them big and scary. Might not have been too upset about the prospect of a certain amount of spectacular spills either. Maybe that’s too cynical/harsh.

They could have put on a show by accepting there’s a reason why everyone else’s courses are the scale they are, and made sure the transitions were perfect with long landings, so the riders felt comfortable pulling out their biggest tricks.

I seem to remember an interview with some rider at the time (possibly Jenny Jones?) who said that the hype about the “dangerous courses” was totally overblown, that the organisers had adjusted the course following feedback from riders in practise sessions and that was a pretty normal thing to happen in these events.

From my point of view, I can see that it is dangerous, but as others pointed out, so are a good majority of the other sports in the Winter Olympics – some of which have had life changing accidents and deaths – but they are apparently okay.

Do we really want to go back to the days when this was the pinnacle of expressive freestyle skiing:

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvk4PpFORD4[/video]

😆

88. In the same year Jean Marc Boivin paraglided from Everest. Boivin skied faces and couloirs that were steep, steep steep; the east face of the Cervin/Matterhorn.

The Olympics aren’t about death defying risks though, they’re competitive sports in managed environments. Ski cross when Shaun Palmer won the X-games was just as exciting, perhaps more so as there was more scope for dueling it out. On current courses a slight loss of speed then landing before the transition is like jumping out of a first floor window.

Ski cross when Shaun Palmer won the X-games was just as exciting

But Lars Engebretsen (in the OP article) isn’t worried about the ski/board cross apparently, or half pipe, only slopestyle.

Well I am worried and have good [/url]

nedrapier – Member

22ft pipe walls were brought in partly for safety reasons

I’m not sure that was even specified as a motivation, and definitely wasn’t the perceived outcome in Crash Reel, unless I’m remembering it wrongly?

Most of the riders have since come out and stated that the Sochi course safety concerns were over-blown. It is totally normal for riders to ask for changes to a newly-built course and Sochi was no different to many other events.

Shaun is a red-herring (pun not intended) – he knew he wasn’t going to win it.