Schlopy’s Quiver: Welcome to my worldHello ski racing fans. This is Erik Schlopy, World Cup ski racer and, now, website columnist. This summer I switched to Nordica, and became what people in the ski racing industry call a ‘vector’ athlete. Because I’m the company’s top-ranked athlete, and because I’m on the whole Nordica package, I will be leading product development for them. I’ve been at it all summer.

This season, Ski Racing has invited me to keep an online blog, focusing on equipment. I’m happy to bring fans closer to a fascinating aspect of the sport that’s hard to describe in sound bytes. I’ll try to keep it as detailed as possible, without giving away my suppliers’ trade secrets. And I’ll try to post items pretty regularly, but it can get pretty hectic in the winter.

So check in every few weeks, because all season long I’ll be keeping my equipment journal here at www.skiracing.com. You can even send me questions. Just e-mail them to me via the site’s online editor at webeditor@insideinc.com

Some of the characters you’ll meet in this column

Before I tell you about what we’ve been doing so far, there are some people you need to meet. I will refer to them often. Sepp Zanon is my ski technician. He has ten years of World Cup ski tuning experience, and has worked with the Norwegians Tom Stiansen and Kjetil Andre Aamodt. He is responsible for preparation of my skis, and is also the key link for communication between the company and me regarding design of new skis.

Another character here is Patrick Wirth. He is a former member of Austria’s World Cup squad, and is now Nordica’s chief ski tester. He is responsible for bringing my ideas to conception. He specializes in preparation of my speed skis (which he did with great success for Aamodt).

And we can’t forget the race guys at Norica in New Hampshire. Willy Booker, Andy Hare and Matt Knittle are all former NCAA All-Americans helping run the race program there. All three of these guys have Vermont ties like me, and Willy is the point person for Nordica’s stable of U.S. Ski Team athletes.

What I’ve been up to all summer
All summer I’ve been working on my quiver, trying to get things perfect before the racing begins. My first camp with Nordica and with Sepp was in New Zealand in August. Matt Knittle was there too. He is a fellow Vermonter who raced for UVM and now works for Nordica. The goal was getting acquainted with all of the products that Nordica has available. It was essentially, a private demo every day. Sepp would prepare six to eight pairs of skis every day and bring them to the hill. When I was skiing on one pair, Sepp and Matt would be skiing on the others, breaking them in. The concentration was always on slalom and giant slalom.

In September I went to Chile, for the U.S. Ski Team’s speed camp there. By now we were starting to narrow it down. I had a systematic process for selecting the best of the best as I worked toward defining my set-up. There are five steps involved here:

STEP ONE:Selecting the model that works best in terms of size, construction and sidecut
STEP TWO:Selecting plates
STEP THREE:Ramp angle
STEP THREE:Binding placement (mounting position)
STEP FOUR:Fine tuning (edge bevels, base bevels, etc.)

These are a lot of variable to manage, but going in that order helps. This whole time, my teammates were making adjustments too. Bode was working on his all-new Atomic set-up and Daron was trying new boots.

Luckily we had the high-speed video. The team invested in it a few years ago, and mostly it’s used for checking technique. But it’s also a great tool for checking the performance of the skis. The video shoots 500 frames a second, so you can see every single thing that happens to a ski in the course of a turn.

It’s incredible how much it reveals. You’re able to see the torsional flex of the skis (to make sure that they’re not flattening out when they’re on edge). You’re also able to check the longitudinal flex (making sure there are no hinge points or break points in the ski). I got a chance to see my new Nordicas with the high speed in all four events and they looked fantastic across the board.

Best in show

Partnering up with a new ski company presented me with a blank slate an almost infinite number of different set-ups I could use. But now it’s October and I’ve run through the five-step process above for each discipline. I’ve got the set-up formula pretty much figured out. I arrived in Austria just a few days ago, and here I’m going through the second phase of my ski tests, a process I call ‘best in show.’ For each event I have a number of skis that each have the same exact set-up. Now I’m running through race-simulation and trying to find the fastest skis. By the World Cup opener in Sölden on October 24, I should have it figured out. I’ll let you know.