Ski Cross

I need to tell you something about a new sport I’ve discovered.

Well I say “I’ve discovered”, I suppose the UK has just discovered it, the rest of you probably know about it already.

I have deliberated a bit about writing about an Olympic sport so soon after KB’s Luge article, but decided in the end that a link is better than a wink to a blind bat, so I might as well get on with it!

Britain has discovered Ski Cross, or as it's sometimes called, Skier X (though the X is cross really anyway, so I don’t know why they bother – kids!).

This is truly a sport that makes the Winter Olympics worthwhile, what a thrill! I’m absolutely taken with the sheer stupidity of this sport. The madness and heroic bravery of the athletes involved is monumental.

For anyone who has just come back from trekking along the Amazon dressed as a Tiger, raising cash for the WWF, and is wondering what on Earth I’m talking about I’ll fill you in now.

Ski Cross has formed as a way of bringing the cool back into Skiing, sadly lost since the advent of the board. Snow boards hit the slopes like an avalanche; anyone who is serious about being trendy threw their skis away, chopped the wheels off their skateboard and threw themselves down the mountain. In no time at all snow boarding turned up at the Olympics and the buzz grew. Snowboard Cross added a level of thrill to the timetable that skiing could not, because suddenly the athletes could race each other instead of a clock.

Snowboard Cross is basically 4 Snowboarders racing down the mountain at the same time; they have to negotiate tricky turns and big jumps to amaze the crowds with their mighty skills. Indeed the skill involved is immense, and the crowds lap it up. I’d seen this sport before and was impressed, but I’m not cool and I’ve never really got my head around boarding.

Suddenly the skiers have bitten back, perhaps now we can once again hold a pair of ski poles with pride?

Ski Cross is Snowboard Cross on Speed. They used exactly the same course on Cypress Mountain in both disciplines, for the Vancouver games. The effect was awesome – dare I say ‘rad’? No probably not.

Anyway, what happens is that 4 skiers come down the course at ridiculous breakneck speeds, slipstreaming and overtaking each other on the way. The action happens so fast and furious that your eyes water from refusing to blink, fearing that if you do you will miss something good. Only the first two people across the line go through to the next round and so anyone in the third or fourth positions are the ones to watch. They have nothing to lose (well you and I would say that their lives could be lost, but this does not seem to occur to them) and so the trailing two are generally prepared to do anything to get past. If it means they crash and burn, taking out their fellow athletes then so be it, because they have lost nothing.

What you get is more fast and crazy overtaking action than in Formula 1, and I do love F1. Skis are just not designed to be used like this, taking 3 meter high jumps after a 90 degree bend whilst sitting on top of a completely different person’s pair of skis is just not what they are for. Snowboarders can do that but surely skiers can’t? Well I’m wrong, because they can and they can do it much, much faster.

Schmid, the Swiss athlete who won Gold was super fast, he never made a single mistake and no one could catch him. His win was well deserved, but I have to say that all the action was going on behind him. In every race the excitement lay in seeing who was going to come second. Names such as Flisar, Delbosco & Gavaggio made me lose breath with excitement as they darted about defying physics with their antics.

The whole spectacle was aided by the BBC; I have to praise them for the coverage. I realise there are people all over the world who saw this event who probably think their own coverage was the best, and for all I know they could be right, but still the BBC got it bang on. Our two presenters just kept making me laugh as they contradicted and corrected each other. Ed Lee & Graham Bell were great fun; I’d ask how they could maintain the level of excitement they were showing for so long without dying, if it hadn’t been that I was doing the same.

The best quote I can give you from these guys came at the end of the Men’s final, it goes like this (from memory so not 100% accurate)…

“Oh yes, Ski Cross is so hard it truly is a MAN’s sport”

“Yes, except for the ladies final in two days time”

And that brings me to the Ladies finals. It came as no surprise to me, though it did to my trusty BBC presenters, that the ladies were even wilder and more fun to watch than the men had been. Surely anyone who’s ever had a relationship with a woman knows how barking mad they are, don’t they? The women’s race was made even more interesting because the WuTangs (listen to me talking like I’ve been a fan for years – these are sharp up hill obstacles placed at the start which completely kill speed if taken wrong) proved to be so very much of a challenge.

Time for a reality check, the women are every bit as motivated and skilled as the men, but generally the men are a bit stronger. The WuTangs need strength, and so the women struggled just little that bit more, which opened up the field a bit at the start. It meant that the fastest skier did no always make the first turn first. This made the action so much more competitive, the overtaking so much more frequent. In one race an athlete came from right at the back to go past all three of her competitors, and win.

Ashleigh McIvor was amazing throughout and naturally the fact the she is Canadian sent the crowds in frenzy as she claimed gold. Meanwhile I failed not to laugh every time the commentators mentioned Fanny Smith. Yes I know I’m immature, but come on, who can’t raise a smile hearing about Fanny coming over the WuTangs? It’s even funny in America.

So there you are, I’m converted. Hopefully the BBC will pick up on the huge stir that has been created in my country for this sport; hopefully they will find a way to get it into the schedules. Who knows, maybe even at the next games we could even get a Brit into the finals. This year we had one competitor involved in the Ski Cross but she failed to make the cut for the finals. Come on Britain, we have some nice Mountains in Scotland; surely we can get some courses built and some athletes trained up?



Check out the BBC's site - though I don't think it you can play the videos outside of the UK.





















1st two images care of the lovely Google and the last from the BBC.