THE ULTIMATE SKI TEST - Steve Foley

Recently I found myself in an unusual situation, alone for the evening. Two kids were away at college, the third at a sleep over and the wife out for the night with her lady friends, and I had in my hand a gift certificate to a local restaurant. This is a no brainer and a good chance to think about the upcoming race season.

I was seated immediately as the end of October is death for most of the restaurants here.
I ordered a glass of Australian Shiraz, sat back and started to think about an article I had just read while waiting for my snow tires to be put on earlier this week.

“The Ultimate Ski Test” was the title and the fact that it was last year’s issue didn’t dampen my fervor, as I was not so much interested in the brands of skis they tested but more about the method of testing that enabled them to label the article so.

I, being a master racer, thought it was critical that they were testing race skis, and they were. The next step was to find if there was a ski tester that I could somehow identify with as far as weight, age and ability.  What luck! There was a woman who was an ex-racer and although much younger, she was close to my weight. True she was younger, but I never thought of myself as old as the chronological reality. Here comes the best part. She was actually testing the ski that I had skied on last year.

It was about this time that my goal became really defined. I wanted to know what were the “FASTEST SKIS.” Then came the first disappointment. (certainly not the salad as I was almost through to the last morsel and the Shiraz was delicious).  As best I could see from the article, there was no way to see if one ski was really faster than another. They talked about the characteristics of the skis and this was done very well. I must admit I was very impressed with the terminology in how they described the skis. “Firm Grip,” “Initiates well,” “A Clean Arc,” "Rockets you out of the turn." These were all very descriptive but not too technical for the average ski racer. But what I really wanted to know was if one ski or another was really much faster than another and why.

So now my thoughts turn to how it would be possible to test that theory. Let’s start with making one ski the test standard, possibly the best selling ski from last year. Or maybe it would be better to choose the ski with the best results nationally or on the world cup level.
Next, you have the tester test the other brands against the standard on an actual timed course. This would require an immense amount of course setting and side slipping. The aforementioned terminology would now become irrelevant, as the clock is unemotional and unforgiving.

One could use this format.

All runs by the same tester.
1st run - standard, 2nd run  - test ski
sideslip
3rd run - test ski, 4th run standard.
Compare times

I know that a USSA coach has actually done this type of a test which resulted with the athlete changing to the test ski.

It was somewhere during the second glass of wine, or perhaps third, that I really started to become creative with “the ultimate ski test." Just what if, you put one brand of ski on one foot and another brand on the other. Video the run, and time the left side of the race versus the right side. This would be a test that my video and sound editing son in college would take as a personal challenge.

While I pondered the possibilities of such a test, the waiter approached and asked,
“How is the wine Sir?”
Somewhat startled I blurted out, “Crisp, Clean, with a Nice Finish!”
He was very impressed.