Brains or Balls?

(These are pics from my recent race in Santa Caterina, Italy, where the men's World Cup was held in December)

Ski racing has got some contradictions. Just to name a couple: cold weather without warm clothing, and going downhill side to side. As the women head to Cortina and St. Moritz (where I will be racing this week!

) and the men head off to Wengen and Kitzbuel I thought I would talk about brains and balls, and why you need them both for this sport. This is one of the reasons that ski racing is so hard. We rocket down a mountain as fast as we can but we also need to use our heads so that we don’t kill ourselves doing so and -- perhaps more importantly -- can win.

Interestingly, in my opinion, younger kids seem to have more of one or the other of these characteristics. They are either more go get ‘ems or they are great thinkers. You can develop both but some who are too much one way never make it as they get older. I know some girls who were incredibly good but fizzled out because they couldn’t put the gas pedal down and push it, or couldn’t put on the brakes when things got hairy. The former normally became slalom skiers if they can deal with moving quickly albeit at a slower speed, and the latter normally had some gnarly crashes (not that everyone in this sport doesn’t have those, theirs were just a little too predictable) and quality time in physical therapy rooms before bowing out of the sport.

Ski racing is beautiful but as you will see if you do a google search of ski racing crashes it will b*tch slap you if you don’t use your head. The movie The Thin Line talks about this a lot, and if you have not seen it I highly recommend it for the ski racing fan, especially this time of year. The unfortunate thing is, and Bode will attest to this, it is in the thin line between destruction and safety that winning occurs. As a speed skier I will say that intelligence is my brake and audacity is my gas pedal and they fight over the clutch and steering wheel.

Brains:

In downhill we travel at speeds up to 120 km/h and after some quick math that means we travel about 33 meters per second at that speed. Last second decisions -- heck talk about last hundredth of a second decisions. Add in bad light and varying snow and it’s a bit of a wonder we make it down at all. In inspection ski racers do a lot of analysis, trying to figure out just how something is going to ski. One thing the veterans have over the newbies is that they may have run a course countless times (factor in doing two training runs and a race per year at each venue and it starts to feel like home). They know just how much they can let fly and just how high the line needs to be because they tried it last year and it worked or it didn’t. The goal in ski racing is that you figure out exactly where you want to be in inspection and are capable of executing that line perfectly; then you adjust with course reports and the way you feel while skiing down. Adjusting during a race run is the most advanced stage of ski racing intelligence. It takes a lot of experience to identify what is going on (remember you’re moving 33m/s) and have time to adjust and also be able to pull that adjustment off in that same perfect way you would pull off your inspected line. 

Balls:

If you are more of a weekend skier then you probably gawk at the way ski racers haul their bodies out of start gates. Even I am a little mesmerized when the boys tuck on Kitzbuel. I think this is one of the most confusing parts about ski racing. You have to turn your brain on and off. Ski racers have to act on what their circuitry tells them, when, say, it’s telling you there are bumps ahead and you have to adjust your line a body width, but then we have to ignore the pleading of our self preservation circuitry telling us “throw it sideways! This is steeeep.” Differentiating the two is so challenging it can take an entire career to develop. Trusting yourself is incredibly tough and trusting yourself and going as hard as you can, while not going too hard is something only the greats have in spades.

So when you are watching the upcoming January classic races, with their big air, high speeds, and demanding corners watch as athletes press on the gas and brake. Watch as racers balance what is smart and what is fast. The physical side is important but the mental side wins the race.