Expert challenges new ski rules

This week, Dodge sent a letter to top FIS officials, urging them to reconsider their deeply unpopular decision to require straighter, longer skis in giant slalom beginning next season. The letter is available online at www.skiracing.com, among other places.

The new ski rules have been criticized across the ski-racing universe, from coaches to athletes and parents to manufacturers, who say that FIS based its decision on research that is inconclusive, and that the longer, straighter skis will take the most important and fun innovation out of giant-slalom races: the ability to arc turns.

The straighter skis are supposed to get racers to skid or slide more of their turns in GS, which FIS has concluded is safer.

Although the pushback about the decision has been both emotional and fact-based, as an engineer and ski innovator, Dodge is a singular voice of authority. His letter is based on a review of the two studies FIS relied on for its decision, and on a series of other engineering and scientific analyses of ski equipment and injuries. 

Dodge is the former chief research and development engineer at Rossignol USA. He also designed the mid-entry Lange boots and designed Burton bindings and boots. He now makes carbon-fiber Dodge Ski Boots, which are used on the World Cup. His company is based in Essex.

“The FIS is pretending to know that this (longer, straighter skis) is proven to be safer,” Dodge said in an interview this week. “But they haven’t proven anything. The risk is unknown. If I could talk to the authors of these studies, I am quite confident they would not say this proves anything. … They have simply contributed to the scientific body of evidence.”

The change, which goes into effect next season for the World Cup and the Junior World Championships and in 2013 for everyone else, will be hugely expensive. It will cost ski manufacturers tens of millions of dollars to make the switch; it will also be costly for athletes at all levels and their families, to say nothing of forcing athletes to learn an entirely new way to ski giant slalom.

If the new skis prove to be less safe, the move exposes FIS officials to big questions about their management and judgment, if not legal action.

“This is an unknown,” Dodge said. “There is nothing proven here. And I wouldn’t want to be in FIS’s shoes if next year injuries go up.”

In a nutshell, the rules end the era of hour-glass shaped skis in GS. Skis would go from the current 185-centimeter minimum length and 27-meter minimum sidecut radius to 195cm minimum length and 35m minimum sidecut radius. Slalom skis will be unchanged, but super-G and downhill skis are also getting longer and straighter, though opposition to those changes is not as intense.

FIS is the international organizing body for ski racing for athletes beginning at age 15. FIS sets equipment, course setting, venue and sponsorship standards for the sport, among other things. It also makes millions of dollars a year as the organizer of the alpine skiing World Cup and Olympic skiing events.

In the world of ski racing, FIS’s authority and power are absolute.

A bet, not proof

In changing the ski specifications — something it has done over the years, but never to such broad and vehement opposition — it sought input from athletes and other experts. 

But the input was limited and done in haste, and the organization’s decision has been criticized as abrupt and autocratic. 

Some athletes are threatening to form a union. Others are saying they will leave the sport.

For Dodge, the decision will irrefutably make giant slalom “less fun,” and will clearly favor bigger, stronger skiers, but it could also make it more dangerous and could hurt FIS. “This is my sport. I love ski racing, and I don’t want it damaged.” 

The science supporting the changes stems from studies conducted by the University of Salzburg and the Oslo Sports Trauma Center. Dodge reviewed both studies.

“The science as it exists now is not settled and the studies the FIS used to draw their conclusions certainly do not amount to proof,” he says in his letter. “If the FIS’s bet that the skis will be safer is wrong, the liability is huge. Can the FIS survive if the new equipment decisions turn out to be wrong? The FIS cannot say they were not warned.”

Dodge’s conclusions about the straighter, longer skis are almost the opposite of FIS conclusions. The longer, straighter skis, Dodge found, can be arced, and will be arced, because that will be the fastest way through a turn in a racecourse. 

But arcing will require skiers to put the ski on a steeper angle to the snow, and will require more force and more knee angulation on the outside, downhill ski. The effect is two-fold: More knee angulation combined with more force on the one outside-ski knee is a recipe for knee injuries; but also the increased weight and pressure on one ski — the outside ski —that is now straighter in the tail could lead to more backward, rotating falls with predictable results on the knee: ligament and meniscus tears.

Why didn’t either the Oslo or Austrian studies see it this way? 

Although this is all very technical, the answer is actually quite practical. The Salzburg study found that skiers loaded up less weight on longer, larger side-cut skis compared to the current 185cm, 27m side-cut skis. No wonder, said Dodge: All the testers were familiar with shorter, more hour-glass shaped skis. In other words, when they got on today’s GS skis, they knew how to throw them into a turn with all their weight, but when they tried skiing GS on what amounted to super-G skis, they were more tentative.

“Their tests assume the load reduction is due to the ski differences, but I believe it is more likely due to the fact that the comparison was made between a ski that was very familiar to the testers and several that were unfamiliar,” Dodge said.

Skiers will learn

What the studies failed to see is that problems will start when athletes learn to arc on the 35-meter radius skis. 

“Athletes will find ways to use 100 percent of their strength, no matter the equipment. This is what athletes do. ... Of course, it would take some training time on these 35-meter skis for the athletes to learn that they can ski faster using more knee angulation, so it is unlikely to show up in short-term tests.”

Instead of setting radius and length standards, FIS should allow racers to find the equipment that is best suited to them, Dodge thinks. Bigger, stronger racers will gravitate to longer, straighter skis, while such skis could be too risky for younger, lighter athletes.

“Skiers should be allowed and encouraged to choose skis with side-cut radii that promote the most stable, strongest and safest postures. FIS should develop coaching guides to help athletes achieve better postures through a better understanding of the relationship between ski design variables and skier postures.”

Could the FIS reverse itself? Reversals by big, unwieldy bodies such as FIS are rare. Further, despite the assertions that the decision is based on science and safety, some believe the move — which will benefit bigger, stronger racers over the highly athletic, almost catlike skiers who have dominated giant slalom in the last few years — was driven by other factors. The Austrian team’s athletes and coaches like the straighter skis, and Atomic, an Austrian brand, supports the change. The Austrians carry a lot of weight with the FIS. Stay tuned.