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September 2001
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE SKI
With thanks to snowboarders ...
To make sense of the trends in
skiing at the moment you have to look back at what's
happened over the last ten to fifteen years. Skiing
ten years ago was really stagnant, and basically uncool
- designs for skis and clothes were being refined, but
there were no real breakthroughs. It was still a sport
mainly for the affluent, so most skis were designed
accordingly - traditionally and conservatively.
With the invention of the snowboard (by
Mike Sims and/or Jake Burton depending on who you ask)
a whole new world opened up. Kids who had learnt to
ski with their parents but were totally bored with it
suddenly had a new lease of interest in the snow, and
a new way of getting down the mountain. People who found
skiing difficult found they could learn to snowboard
in a few days rather than weeks.
Snowboarding injected youth and all that brings with
it into the ski industry. Suddenly there were trends
again - kids didn't want to wear one-piece suits like
their parents (or ear-muffs!), so the industry found
itself with an entire market to cater for practically
overnight, and whole companies sprang up to cash in
on this.
The snowboard industry was born, and it
brought a new style to snowsports - this market was
highly influenced by looks and attitude and whether
something was 'cool' rather than whether it worked or
not. The design and style came from where the kids were
coming from - rock bands and skate parks, comics and
manga, playground punch ups and meeting girls after
school. Stickered lunchboxes and video games. Movies.
Surfing.
Everywhere across this industry you could see the results
of a market lead by appearance - boards being such a
large piece of area were the perfect place for new designs
and cool graphics. Magazines sprang up overnight with
fresh new designers and writers.
Clothing and board manufacturers were
pouring money into design again because the market was
so acutely sensitive to it - and still is. The three
interlinked markets of skating, surfing and snowboarding
all influenced one another and ideas and trends sprung
out this new community. And where was skiing in all
of this?
Initially most traditional ski-orientated manufacturers
simply ignored it - they saw snowboarding as a fad that
wouldn't last too long, or saw it consisting of part
of the market (ie youth) that traditionally didn't bring
with it the disposable income to buy goods with.
Little did they know - the consistent
growth of the industry and rejection of skiing as being
boring and old-fashioned has meant that the manufacturers
were caught entirely off balance - snowboarding grew
at an unprecedented rate and is only now showing signs
of balancing out.
The success of the snowboard industry meant that the
ski manufacturers had to go back to the drawing board
and try and find a way to make skiing fun again. And
what they came back with was the 'carving' ski which
came out around 1997. Simply put, these new skis with
a lot more sidecut to them made learning how to carve
a ski through a turn (rather than skidding it as most
people used to do) a lot easier. Alongside this they
started making skis softer and easier to use. And people
started enjoying skiing again.
Many of the traditional ski and ski clothing
manufacturers re-branded themselves to cater for this
new market, or in some cases started up a new company
alongside the old one to cater for both markets - White
Stuff now have their Pharmacy offshoot. Descente has
just started up Rotor Sports. Elan bought out boards
under the Nale moniker for a while. You find that a
lot of small, new board manufacturers actually turn
out to be owned by companies like Rossignol or K2 if
you trace them back.
Two years ago the second breakthrough in skiing happened.
Triggered partly by Jonny Moseley's famous 360 mute
grab in his winning run in the 1998 Olympic Moguls at
Nagano, skiers were seeing boarders do amazing tricks
and wanted to be involved.
Salomon - from the ideas of Mike Douglas,
the Canadian Freestyle coach - bought out its revolutionary
1080 ski. This was the first 'twin-tip' ski - a ski
that, as the name suggests, has two tips - mainly to
aid in the ability to land a jump going backwards (or
'switch'). This ski pretty much single handedly brought
the 'cool' of snowboarding back to skiing with its bright
yellow graphics and attitude.
Suddenly in board parks everywhere skiers
were ripping it up alongside their boarder friends in
the half-pipe and over jumps. People who used to ski
but changed to snowboarding when it came out, were re-discovering
skiing again.
At last year's Board-X event in Battersea, alongside
the board competition, two skiers were doing demos,
one of them American Evan Raps, and the tricks they
were pulling put most of the boarders to shame. The
Daily Mail Ski Show, one of the bastions of old fashioned
skiing, has embraced this new trend and made a huge
'big air' jump the centre piece of the event, with demos
and a competition during the event.
And finally, manufacturers - inspired by this resurgence
of interest in skiing, have started making their skis
inspiring as well.
Influenced by the graphics of snowboards
and skateboards, ski manufacturers have finally started
looking at their skis as canvases.
Salomon again have been one of the brands
at the forefront of this. This year, their 1080 ski
has a different graphic for each length it comes in
- something the snowboard industry has always done.
Their 'Pocket Rocket' ski has a graphic influenced by
Japanese Bandam comics. Volkl's range features skis
designed and painted by British artist and skier Jamie
Strachan. Dynastar's Candide Thovex signature ski was
designed with Candide looking over their shoulder, and
features a painting of a group of people sitting around
a campfire with the smoke from the fire floating up
the ski. Rossignols equivalent to the 1080, the Pow'air,
features graphics that wouldn't look out of place on
a snowboard.
Right now, skiing is an exciting sport to be involved
in. It's shaking off its conservative history and embracing
the spirit and youth and innovative ideas that snowboarding
has brought into the snowsports arena. The popularity
enjoyed by up and coming athletes like Tanner Hall,
Evan Raps, Candide Thovex, and JP Auclair is expanding
to the point where they have a similar public profile
to their snowboarding brethren, and skiers like Seth
Morrison, Shane McConkey, Ryan Oakden and Stian Hagen
are taking tricks learnt in the park and pipe out to
big mountain skiing - the next level.
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