Sure, Aksel was able to freeski in the first season, but it took him 7 years before he really became accomplished at it. To use a car analogy, one person might think that F1 is the pinnacle of autos, but take a Ferrari F1 car and you can't even navigate the streets of New York. A rally car would be able to do so, but wouldn't handle the rigors of off-roading in Moab or running the Indy 500. It is somewhat pointless to look at a single discipline and define that as the pinnacle for an entire genre of applications.
Similarly in skiing. There are elements of race technique that may have application in off-piste technical skiing, but there are many aspects of the race blend that not only are less relevant, they can get you in trouble in a hurry. Look at the problems that CSIA Level 4 trainers from Eastern Canada have when they confront the steep technical terrain of Blackcomb -- they either quickly find that their mantra of what constitutes good skiing doesn't apply in those situations and develop a new blend, or they quickly retreat to the hard snow and less steep terrain of eastern Canada.
The question that was originally asked by
@Josh Matta was why is synchro skiing considered the pinnacle of teaching? I'm not sure that it really is, but there's no doubt that synchro skiing is a part of interski. And as
@Loki1 so insightfully commented, synchro skiing is a task that requires and demonstrates adaptability and versatility. That's not something that is really demonstrated in World Cup ski racing. And while Aksel did ok in his first foray into free ride film, there's a ton of stories about World Cup champions who could not even navigate a deep inbounds off day let alone a heli trip because their technique blend was too singularly focused on skiing gates in hard snow.
So back to teaching. There’s no doubt that the World Cup has something to show us about technique. It should not be the be-all and end-all nor the singular focus of those of us who teach skiing, in my opinion. Few of our clients, if any, aspire to become a World Cup racer, and perhaps a few more do aspire to run gates. Rather, ski instruction is about versatility, not only in the level of the client we are teaching, but in the application our clients seek or even what the clients look for us to provide. So is it surprising that an international convention of ski instructors (some of whom actually are former World Cup competitors, by the way) has tasks that demonstrate versatility in technique?
Mike