Last week's 2000 US Free-skiing Open in Vail, Colorado, was billed as "the future of skiing", and the event's promoter, Freeze magazine, professes to be the bible of "the new skiing culture".
There is no doubt that skiing has undergone a revolution in recent years. Several developments have been sparked off by the new shapes of ski design: funcarving, where skiers incline their bodies inwards at crazy angles; and adventurous off-piste techniques, where imposing Alaskan powder faces are conquered using just a handful of huge, high-speed turns. And ski-racing styles have become ever more intense and aggressive (as exemplified by Hermann "The Herminator" Maier).
The energetic young sport of snowboarding has occasionally rebelled against skiing, but has also influenced it in recent years. The "new school" of free-stylers (also known as "trick skiers" or by their 1970s moniker "hotdoggers") are creating asymetric flips with "grab" moves modelled on snowboarding tricks.
As the cult of "new school free-skiing" has spread via ski magazines and resort word-of-mouth, a haphazard circuit of new events has sprung up. The most lucrative of these take place in North America. ESPN, the sports cable channel, has just organised its third Winter X-Games. This year, rival network NBC felt compelled to put on its own version, the Gravity Games.
The pool of potential sponsors for these Generation X events is so rich, that Jonny Moseley, 1998 Olympic mogul champion and a golden boy of the "new school", decided to forgo mainstream mogul competitions completely for two years and run his own free-skiing event, The Jonny Moseley Invitational.
The US Free-skiing Open was open to any would-be hotshot free-skiers who wanted to measure themselves against some of the legends of the genre. The three days of competition included slopestyle (where competitors descend over a course of "rails" and jumps), big air (one large jump), and a skiercross (where racers compete five abreast through a racecourse of banked turns and jumps). In addition, there was an unofficial "halfpipe jam session".
In the slopestyle, competitors had to slide sideways down a couple of metal rails, including one with a downward kink halfway along - the infamous "sex-change rail". Then, they had the choice of a "table-top jump" or a sideways "quarterpipe hit". The course finished with two "booters" - huge jumps with an upwards kick. Over two days, the field was whittled down to 10 finalists. On the decisive run, it was inevitably Moseley who best impressed the judges, with some "above the tree-tops air" on the quarterpipe, and a "switch rodeo roll 720".
One of the most impressive moves was by Shane McConkey, who took off backwards, did a back flip, and landed backwards. But his sketchy landings did not impress the judges and he failed to make the final.
'Compared to traditional aerials competition, which has become a bit of a formula with everyone doing the same type of tricks, this is more skiing-oriented," said Moseley. "Each competitor is doing different moves, being creative, thinking out of the box. But it's impossible for things to continue like this - eventually free-skiing will become increasingly technical, with more rules. And then something else new will pop up." Next season, Moseley plans a return to mainstream mogul competition in order to prepare for the defence of his title at the 2002 Olympics.
The skiercross is modelled on snowboarding's "boardercross", which in turn was derived from motorcross. In each heat, five competitors thrust out of the start simultaneously, and jostle for position going into the first bend.
So, did I witness the "future of skiing"? Undoubtedly, the gladiatorial skiercross has the potential to become an attractive TV alternative to traditional World Cup ski-racing, where the ever-tinier time differences make all the racers now look identical. In skiercross, the public can clearly see who is winning, and the ever-present wipeouts, as in the knockabout sport of short-track speed-skating, simply add to the uncertainty and excitement.
But the event is presently contested by middle-ranking ex-racers. Until skiercross organisers can guarantee enough press coverage and prize money to attract the best skiers in the world, such as Hermann Maier and Kjetil Aamodt, it will lack ultimate credibility.
As for the new school of freestyle, it will probably become assimilated into mainstream freestyle, as Moseley predicts. But there will always be rebellious youths out there on the slopes, riding skis, snowboards and who knows what else, ready to challenge the pre-conceptions of their elders.
