EiE_ wrote:
Halvard wrote:
It is actually quite ironic that on a mostly long distance triathlon discussion from, people are asking for standardized equipment. Especially when most of the discussions are about buying speed.
I do not think we disagree about waxing at pro-level. My concerns is strictly related to cost of participation at the junior levels, and the treshold for young skiers who do not have parents with waxing experience.
I think we can all agree something is wrong when 12 year olds are using Cera style powder and HF glider on their skis for a regional competition. easily 100-150$ per race. But if one person does, then you have to do it to be in contention.
A
I coached Junior and high school level racing for kids in Canada for several years. I would be preparing skis for kids with pro level wax expense because it I did not they would just lose.
The arms race was silly. At the end of the day I could literally know which kids would race fast based on their raw 1 mile and 5000m run times in the autumn. You get a kid with a massive engine and train them technically and the fast skis or slow skis eventually the big engines with the good technique shine thru. You can't have them on slow was. It is just unfair to those kids.
The kids whose parents were top masters racers always had fast skis and fast wax but I had to make sure that I put the kids with big engines without skier parents on fast skis and fast wax so they could out gun the kids with the home front advantage (maybe I was more sympathetic to kids without the ski and wax arsenal at home because I grew up in a non sporting family and my coaches in all sports in high school brought me into the competitive sport world).
But it would be awesome if we could just levelize the waxing variable. Everyone drops off their selected skis the day before and they all get done exactly the same .
Halvard this is not about random people on a triathlon forum complaining about the equipment side of ski racing. It's atheletes and coaches who are skiers talking about skiing on a ski thread. Almost everyone who posted on this thread knows what they are talking about (at least we are not all clueless). it's the same on this forum when you get on the fish thread. People on that thread know far more than many swim coaches