Daron Rahlves responds to Tanner Hall's disparaging comments about ski racers

Daron Rahlves responds to Tanner Hall’s disparaging comments about ski racersThis November, World Cup downhiller Daron Rahlves has been trading some trash talk with new-school freeride icon Tanner Hall. Sitting in the lobby of a Beaver Creek hotel at this week’s World Cups, Rahlves responded to some disparaging comments Hall had made in the pages of Freeskier Magazine. Here is some of what Rahlves said to assembled sports writers.

“He had some good things to say about how he loves skiing, and how he needs to thank his parents for giving him this opportunity. Which is great. That’s how most kids start, and it’s good to see the respect there. But the question was, what do you feel about Bode Miller making these multimillion-dollar contracts, and he’s like ‘it’s b—— man,’ and ‘this man’ and ‘that man.’ And ‘downhill racing’s so easy,’ and ‘all you have to do is go top to bottom and there’s no changes in terrain.’

“Are you kidding me? If somebody’s going to be talking smack about something and putting something down, they should know. He’s not educated enough. He’s young, and he’s in his own little freeskiing world. To me, I think it’s great the way they expand the sport, and it’s something the industry must pay attention to. But jumping on rails is more like rollerblades. To me it’s not skiing. If you’re skiing, you’re taking stuff on the mountain and using natural terrain and stuff. These guys are impressive and they work hard to accomplish these tricks, but it’s the same thing over and over again.

“He says ‘man’ so many times in his interview, he should learn to be a man and respect those guys that have earned something. We get paid well because we’re obviously doing something for the sport. I pose a challenge to Tanner. I said ‘I’ll hook you up with some downhill boards and you come up to Val Gardena or Kitzbuhel. And just make it to the bottom. That’s all I ask.’ I gave him the dates. December 15-18 and January 21-23…

“I’m not claiming anything, and I’m not trying to put down freeskiing at all, because it’s a great part of the sport. But there’s a lot of respect that they should give us even if they don’t think it’s quite what they have. We’re out there doing what we can, and it’s not easy. I want to see him strap on some 215’s. He couldn’t even turn those things, couldn’t even ski a clean arc on those things.

“I think what Tanner Hall is getting to is saying that ski racers just go top to bottom racing gates and that’s it. Another thing he said was, ‘you get me on a downhill and I’ll make it to the bottom, and I might not be as fast as these guys, but you put any ski racer in a pipe and he won’t even drop in.’

“That’s wrong. It’s wrong that he could make it to the bottom, plus it’s wrong that I wouldn’t drop in.”