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Mendieta

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I would watch ski ballet more than I would watch a skating.

Me too. As a skier, I appreciate the difficulty and I keep thinking how good it would be, for anybody's skiing, even doing 10% of what these athletes do.

For the general population, I would think figure skating is a lot more attractive on it's own. It looks a lot more impressive.

But then again, half of the air time is friggin' curling. Seriously? No toom for one acroski event?

I do like the idea of making it part of a combined freestyle event!
 
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Me too. As a skier, I appreciate the difficulty and I keep thinking how good it would be, for anybody's skiing, even doing 10% of what these athletes do.

For the general population, I would think figure skating is a lot more attractive on it's own. It looks a lot more impressive.

But then again, half of the air time is friggin' curling. Seriously? No toom for one acroski event?

I do like the idea of making it part of a combined freestyle event!
In todays age of specialization makes the combined tough. Sure we see the occasional athlete in multiple events but it is becoming the exception more than the rule.
 

Don in Morrison

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I've always wondered how ballet was doing just fine for all those years without being part of the Olympics, and then just disappeared altogether when it was rejected by the Olympics. Why did it all of a sudden need the Olympics to be validated, when it didn't before?

I hope I can get the granddaughter to learn a simple 360 spin before the season is over. I'll have about 3 more days with her this season, and I might need to buy her another lesson to get her skills to where she can try that. I gotta get her doing ballet before I get too old to teach her. It's getting harder for me every year to do this stuff.
 

Andy Mink

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In todays age of specialization makes the combined tough. Sure we see the occasional athlete in multiple events but it is becoming the exception more than the rule.
I think there should be a board/ski combined event. Ledecka!
 

Goose

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And then Suzy had all those corny vintage Suzy chapstick commercials.

So what would be today's versions of that for a product advertisement using ski ballet?

Will there be some sort of Kardashian Booty Botox commercial? Or perhaps some competitor named John tallman will do a Viagra commercial. Whatever it is it won't be something as innocent as those old Suzy chapstick ones. Lol.

As for the sport/art itself? I suppose if enough followers than why not.
 

crgildart

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Still wondering where all the competitors will get the 60" ski poles to ski ballet?? A few did it without poles but for big air spins and pole flips those 5 foot poles were pretty much mandatory..
 

Karen_skier2.0

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I've always wondered how ballet was doing just fine for all those years without being part of the Olympics, and then just disappeared altogether when it was rejected by the Olympics. Why did it all of a sudden need the Olympics to be validated, when it didn't before?

Freestyle skiers wanted to ski on the ultimate stage--at the Olympics. They wanted to be on par with other sports such as Alpine or Cross Country. They wanted to be recognized as athletes and actually had to give up any professional status to do it. The sport became sanctioned by the FIS and had its first FIS World Championship in 1986. That meant improving safety (i.e. aerial progressions), providing consistency in courses (especially aerials), and defining the scoring parameters.

The biggest hurdles in becoming an Olympic event:
  • New sports should be competitive in at least 25 countries spread over at least 3 continents. (Americas and Europe were the primary source of competitors, with limited from Australia and Asia--which, quite frankly, sums up most of the winter sports due to geography alone. )
  • Large participation. Ballet has the fewest number of participants of the freestyle disciplines

Ballet had the biggest struggles since the IOC prefers to bring in timed sports over judged sports. (Initially, the IOC wanted to accept moguls only as a timed event.) They needed to sure up the scoring such that it was both reliable and valid. If a run is performed exactly the same at two different events, it should be scored the same. Ballet/Acro almost became like the short program in figure skating with strict requirements for pole flips, axles, and linking maneuvers. There were so many required elements (9 flips or axles and 10 linked maneuvers) performed on a shortened, steeper course in 1.5 minutes (down from 2.5 minutes) that it left no room for freedom. There were variations of rotations and straight vs cross-skied landings and takeoffs. The judging went through a series of changes. At one point, there were 6 identical moves that had to be performed by each competitor in order for the judges to get a chance to do a straight comparison between athletes. I'm looking at a former World Cup competitor's thesis--in Swedish--with the help of google translate. It look like the FIS really played with the format a lot and established a scoring system focused on Technical Merit and Artistic Impression combined with Deductions. Based on the competitors' opinions, the format favored difficulty over artistry.

So basically, in the age of figure skating scoring of 6.0 based on ordinals, ballet skiing / acroski was forced to make a scoring system representative of today's figure skating system. Essentially, trying to make the sport objective killed the sport.
 

Karen_skier2.0

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Still wondering where all the competitors will get the 60" ski poles to ski ballet?? A few did it without poles but for big air spins and pole flips those 5 foot poles were pretty much mandatory..

I still have a pair of the Atomics ;)

LEKI probably still has molds. A few years back at SIA, I spoke to the LEKI rep and he said that a decade ago someone asked him if they had any stock of ballet poles. A longtime Canadian freestyler and coach purchased the remaining 50 pairs.

The owner of ZipLine poles is a former freestyler and has said on occasion that he would make ballet poles if he could get enough people to commit to orders.
 

crgildart

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I still have a pair of the Atomics ;)

LEKI probably still has molds. A few years back at SIA, I spoke to the LEKI rep and he said that a decade ago someone asked him if they had any stock of ballet poles. A longtime Canadian freestyler and coach purchased the remaining 50 pairs.

The owner of ZipLine poles is a former freestyler and has said on occasion that he would make ballet poles if he could get enough people to commit to orders.

We also used to cut the handle off the top of a pole, cram another pole sans the basket down in to the top of the other then duct tape them. It sort of worked but they would eventually rattle loose needing to be banged down together and re taped..

ID One would be my bet to start cranking out poles if ballet does make a comeback..
 

LiquidFeet

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Got any beginning tutorial videos on ski ballet?
Obviously the video in #25 was awesome, but don't see trying those tricks anytime soon.

There's a step-by-step book with photos on how to do the primary maneuvers of freestyle from 1976. That must be close to ballet skiing, right? It's available from the usual sites.

Freestyle Skiing, Mohan, Hiltner, Barthel

Among other things, it includes chapters on one ski spins, flexibility stunts, snow contact stunts, pole stunts, upright aerials, inverted aerials, twisting aerials. At the back there's a chapter on competitions. It covers mogul events, aerial acrobatic events, and stunt and ballet events.
 
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Karen_skier2.0

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@Plai
I have some of those intro books that I've picked up over the years for historical sake. I'll take some photos and post. Plus, I'll take a look for some video.
 

Karen_skier2.0

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I just went through a box of freestyle stuff. It was a trip down memory lane that I'm not sure that I wanted to take. (Letters to make the team, but unable to accept.) On a somewhat positive note, at one nationals I was an alternate in ballet and in moguls so I foreran the events. Ironically, I placed 8th in both. With moguls, that means 8th without any air points.
 

Karen_skier2.0

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The book Skiing Freestyle: Official Training Guide of the U.S. Freestyle Ski Team was written by Park Smalley (USFST) coach and Hilary Engisch (Mogul World Champion). (There are quite a few cheap copies on Amazon.)

Essentially, the moves are broken into spins, axles/jumps, and flips.

Here are a few photos from the book to give you a taste of the spins.

(I'm going to have to get out the scanner to make this easier.)

Two-footed 360 Spin

360spintwofooted.jpg


One-footed 360 Spin

360spin.jpg



Javelin Spin

JavelinSpin.jpg


Illusion

Illusion1.jpg
Illusion2.jpg
Illusion.jpg


Leg Breaker (hey, I didn't name it!)

LegBreaker.jpg
 

Wolfski

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And then Suzy had all those corny vintage Suzy chapstick commercials.

Well, we do have the Lindsey V Bounty commercial

We also used to cut the handle off the top of a pole, cram another pole sans the basket down in to the top of the other then duct tape them. It sort of worked but they would eventually rattle loose needing to be banged down together and re taped.

That sounds dangerous and extremely brilliant, I'd have done the same. I think I still have abdominal bruises from learning some of those pole flips.
I do remember some skiers poles were longer than their skis, weighed just about the same too.
 

Carolinacub

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Freestyle does, indeed need three disciplines. They should also award the biggest prize money for the combined championship.. Tired of freesytle being one discipline specialists.. Way more fun for everyone when most compete in everything..
However, I think those three disciplines should be:

Big Air.. The current Aerials format is really only gymnasts who couldn't stay on their skis down a bump run

Slopestyle: Adding some ballet tricks is possible during the upper rails and boxes section

Moguls: No comments needed.. On second thought, ditch the two prefab jumps and have them focus more on turns and natural upright air, Already got enough REAL jumps in Slopestyle and Big Air under my proposal.

Halfpipe is a maybe for a fourth?? But that would require lots more resorts having a decent one.. Not fiscally viable most places..
Way back in the day there used to be a competition called the Dearborn Cup. The format was you went down a mogul run and then transitioned into a ballet run and then transitioned into a jump. This was at Aspen Highlands back in the early 80's. not sure if it was run at other mountains or not. I have no clue on how they scored and I guarantee the purses were pretty small. One of the limiting things was you were not allowed to do inverts on the jump.
 

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