Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Top US under 18 year old.

This is Nick Veith one of a group of strong under 18 years olds in the US Ski Team program. We work with him to set up his boots, He's on Dodge boots. You don't have to look hard to see amazing flexibility in his hips. 
Nick has been skiing out of the Steamboat school program, his Dad, Alan is an old friend and is Nick's main coach. We skied together years ago. Alan is a strong skier, French "B" Team.

You can see the influence of the strong upper body, Counter Balance and Counter Acting. Inside hand forward, outside hand very relaxed, not pushing or driving. Ski angles are amazing. In today's world of world cup racing, it's no longer about achieving angles, everyone can do it, to extreme levels. It's about fore/aft balance.

It's also about running a clean edge without hard pressure, in-other -words, tipping the ski early and increasing the angles as the turn develops. You don't want any hard quick edging movements. This means you can't twist the ski or un-weight it in transition to let it drift very far. This incurs a late and hard edge, as we saw in Solden those skiers went out of the course. Transition should be continuos untipping with retraction and engaging tipping movements with the lower body, before the apex or falline.

It also applies to slalom, a softer early edge is faster than a hard late edge set, Deville is the master at going straighter than anyone and still staying relatively evenly pressured. I'm predicting some wins for him this year, in slalom. I thought he could do it last year, but he's looking even better this year.

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