Ready on the red. … Ready on the blue. … Racer ready … The doors fly open and both racers explode onto the course. Those words are the starting cadence for professional ski racing and it’s great to see the World Pro Ski Tour back in action. When my kids were little I would often call out that cadence on top of the bunny slope.     

I became hooked on ski racing in middle school after watching my first Pro Ski Race at Bristol Mountain in the 1970s. Days before the race they built two pro jumps that were fenced off, but I would fly down the Outer Orbit race trail and sneak off the corner of those jumps and pretend to be racing some guy from the Alps. After college I raced in a number pro format “B” races with the barn door start gates and pro jumps and it was a lot of fun. I was not really a professional racer, but if I skied well enough in the qualifying rounds, I was guaranteed a minimum of four race runs for the day, so not a bad deal. 

One of the things I loved about the pro ski racing format is no points! Racers would show up at registration, then be placed for two qualifying rounds, which meant two racers were starting on two separate courses, so seeding was not really an issue. If you skied fast in qualifying then you were paired with a racer who may have qualified with a slower time — which meant I usually raced in the round of 32 against the faster qualifiers. Regardless, I loved the pro format as it was a lot of fun! 

As a long-time coach I have never understood the obsession with USSA or FIS points in our sport. In pro ski competitions the best racers are still on the course for up to 12 runs in one day. It requires not only great skiing but the ability to handle very tough course conditions with two jumps and lots of ruts around the gates. The line pro racers take in the first round is pretty much gone in the later rounds, as it requires a tremendous agility, strength, and endurance. Not surprisingly, we are seeing the emergence of some racers like Robert Cone who has revitalized his ski racing career winning all four races on the 2021 COVID abbreviated World Pro Ski Tour.

Not an equal opportunity sport

Getting back to points, the No. 1 driver in the high cost of alpine ski racing is chasing points. The problem in the United States is access to FIS races for our most talented ski racers. Some areas in the country like northern New England and the Rocky Mountain Region host a lot of FIS races, where many other areas only have limited FIS races or none at all.  Additionally, many of these FIS races are held during the weekdays, when club racers are in school. In other SR articles it’s been stated proximity to the mountains is a key component to success in ski racing. However, ski racers do not need to live near a large resort to be successful in ski racing. For example, I live in Upstate New York where we have about 50 ski areas, more than any other state in the country, with excellent terrain and most have lights for evening training after school. However, other than Whiteface or Gore in the Adirondack Mountains, our entire region is devoid of FIS races, even though many of our ski areas are large enough to host these competitions.

One of my suggestions is to utilize a combination of USSA and FIS points for ranking ski racers in the United States. In my prior SR article, I mentioned developing a “club track” for those athletes who cannot afford the ski academy option. For example, when high school students apply for college admissions they are ranked on a number of different criteria including their grade transcript, SATs, ACTs, activities, sports, etc., because they all come from different demographics like income, race, rural, city, and suburban areas. So why do we only utilize the FIS points for ranking U18 athletes (high school-aged racers) when the FIS point system is so geographically limited? Today NCAA programs pretty much red-line any region without FIS racing opportunities. Shouldn’t all our racers within the U.S. Skiing pipeline be given equal opportunity to qualify for state, regional, and national competitions? 

We may not be able to change how USSA and FIS points are calculated; however, we can change our attitude about points, and yes, racers can ski fast from a later start number. When TV commentators interview Mikaela Shiffrin after a World Cup race they never even mention her FIS point profile. For example, if you look at Shiffrin’s FIS results dating back to the season of 2010-11, when her points were 999, in her first NorAm slalom race at Loveland, she started with bib No. 81 and finished 14th. The following day Shiffrin started bib 75 and finished 10th. Then, in a NorAm GS in Aspen she started bib 55 and finished in 16th. Even more impressive, at a NorAm super combined in Panorama, Shiffrin started bib 70, which appears to be “dead last” and finished first! So why do we place so much emphasis on a point system and preferred seeding? The reality for U.S. ski racers if you want to race at the Europa Cup or World Cup level, then you will most likely be starting at the back of the pack, regardless of your domestic FIS point ranking.

Flip it

We currently utilize a “flip-seed format” for most of our U12 and U14 competitions, which helps level the playing field for all competitors. Therefore, why not utilize the flip-seed format for U16 and U18 regional and national competitions if they both qualified for the same competition? Why should racers from Colorado with ample FIS races be given preferred seeding over athletes from Minnesota with very limited FIS scoring opportunities? While many coaches may disagree with my suggestion, the “next Mikaela Shiffrin” would not have any problem finding the podium in a flip-seed competition. This would also give the USST a better understanding of athletes who can ski at the next level in difficult course conditions like the Europa Cup. In Bryce Bennett’s 2020 Ski Racing article, he wrote “Fast skiing is not fast skiing,” in which he means the course sets, snow surface, and level of competition is much more challenging than most races in the United States. Therefore, why are we having our best U18 and U16 racers skiing in the first seed of a perfectly groomed slope? What happens to those same racers when they arrive at a Europa Cup race starting bib 79? Will they be able to handle the more difficult course conditions? Utilizing a flip-seed format for our U18 and U16 racers who are only of high school age is not exactly something new, because they have all successfully skied with that format in prior junior races. Expanding the use of the flip-seed format would level the playing field for all our junior racers and discourage point chasing. The bottom line is the USST doesn’t need more kids with low points, they need athletes who can ski fast regardless of the course conditions.

I remember attending a coaches clinic years ago and one of the instructors joked, “Leave it up to the Europeans to come up with an aristocratic FIS point system where some countries still have a monarchy.” That’s why in the United States we often do things differently than other countries and finishing first in the medal count at the 2020 Summer Olympic Games was not by accident. So the next time you step into the starting gate, fire out onto the race course with variable snow, ice, washboard, ruts, and maybe a different line than you had anticipated during inspection. That’s what ski racing is all about.