FWT 17 Freeride World Tour spoilers within

[TahoeJ]

Not a fan of this venue as it seems kind of limited in terms of creative options... and it's made worse by the contestants spending half their runs skiing on bed surfaces and navigating debris on the runouts.

[meter-man]

Hope they bring back the Mac Daddy at Revy next year instead of this venue.

Challenging for sure and entertaining in the way a trainwreck is. Women and SB men were a lot more relaxed. It's one thing if five people mess up a 360 off some bump and double eject in powder, it's something else when five people do major tomahawks down a steep, rocky face. I found the commentary pretty jarring at times.

"yeah lotsa pressure on this young man who wants to go to alaska, oooooh uhoh well looks like that was too much pressure. safety is really important to us, see how many guides we have? Crunch time!!! here this next guy is also under a lot of pressure! let's see if he does better. Oh, nope, guess not. Did I mention how important safety is to us? Here, watch this video of riders training with recco detectors while our guides scrape him off the hill. we will resume shortly with the next guy who is under a lot of pressure and wants to go to alaska. wooohooo! Crunch time!!!"

Nailed it. Rough conditions for the riders that's for sure. FWT posted a FB that was like: "no worries, nobody is broken irreparably."

ETA: here it is

Bene Mayr and Mark Mikos are currently at the hospital for a check-up. Dennis "Heedless" Risvoll has a broken hand and a small fracture to a vertebra but he should be fine with some rest. Ivan Mad Malakhov is fine and already resting at the hotel. We wish them a swift recovery

[Vt-Freeheel]

Those high speed tomahawks and Risvols impact were gruesome to watch unexpectedly. That venues conditions were terrible for an event like this, lucky the injuries weren't more severe.
The "Go big or go home" commentary was uncalled for after the previous carnage.

[TahoeJ]

Also not a fan of the replay setup where they don't put a red start dot for the skiers/riders who get injured and/or didn't finish their run. Possibly an innocent oversight, but.........

[Angle Parking]

Also not a fan of the replay setup where they don't put a red start dot for the skiers/riders who get injured and/or didn't finish their run. Possibly an innocent oversight, but.........

I doubt it's an oversight. A subtle form of censorship I'd say. Kinda like that stagnant long shot they go to when someone bails hard and lays motionless. In a 'jerry of the day' ski world, i can sort of understand why they do it but it feels a little paternalistic nonetheless. I watched the event live in the middle of the night. It was kind of a heavy experience. I go back to the FWT site today to rewatch some of the bails, mostly to confirm that I had indeed witnessed such a barage of unholy sh*t eatings, only to discover that they biggest bails didn't have red dots.

I've only been following the FWT closely for a couple of seasons. Question for those of you who have been following free ride comps longer; where does this rank amongst greatest displays of carnage? Has there ever been such a concentration of epic and scary sh*t eatings?

[gramboh]

Watched the replay of men's ski tonight. Wow, heavy crashes. Glad the guys are relatively unscathed. I can't remember a FWT with that many huge crashes from a field of 20ish riders?

[galibier_numero_un]

Agree with all of the comments. They're turning the riders into sacrificial sheep. No worries fans! There's a steady supply of new riders from the FWQ. Sheesh!

... Thom

[klar]

from FWT facebook:

Quick update regarding the different riders who fell yesterday:
Bene Mayr / Ivan Mad Malakhov have been checked out at the hospital and are already back at the hotel resting. We are still waiting for an update on Jérémie Heitz (pain at his knee) who is being examined by the doctors.
Mark Mikos has broken his heel bone (feet) and will need a surgery to put/fasten the bone back.
About Dennis "Heedless" Risvoll, he has a broken hand and two fractured vertebras which don’t need surgery. He can move his legs and arms and will be able to stand/ walk as of tomorrow but will need to stay in the hospital for 2 to 3 weeks (in Austria and then in Norway) to rest and have his back healing.
We are sending you all our healing vibes guys! Have a good rest #FWTfamily


Malakhov posted this, bad fb translation from russian but not sounding very happy
"If anyone's interested I've survived the night, tossing it is very difficult, no suitable positions. Elbow hurts significantly and leg, yesterday my back all interrupted, now how would all of the body is broken. Hard to get up, sit down, turn around and walk. Now I have to be on the road at 700 km and 7-8 hours from Austria to the base in courmayeur, Italy, has not been able to find a fellow travelers, I have to go alone..."

[McDee]

Wow, what a shitshow. The face looked aweful, the avy blasts looked like it had taken the snowlayers off all the way down to the ground. It did not look like fun in the top section, and to allow 2 other riders to hit that drop to lookers right where all the rocks were sticking out in the landing seemed completely irresponsible after the first crash there. And then to read that post from Malakhov... i'm not surprised he sounds pissed, even through google translate! On the other hand the womens ski runs from Walkner and Huber were class.

[McDee]

Does anyone know where Sami Anthamatten was? It looked like he was out in China with a FWT Team and Xavier checking out possible locations a couple of days before the comp. Did he forefit the comp? I thought he had a good chance to go through or am i misinterpreting the scoreing?

[Vt-Freeheel]

Anthamatten was in the US filming for a sponsor commitment. They also said Alto was out for personal reasons.

[ogi]

Wow, what a shitshow. The face looked aweful, the avy blasts looked like it had taken the snowlayers off all the way down to the ground. It did not look like fun in the top section, and to allow 2 other riders to hit that drop to lookers right where all the rocks were sticking out in the landing seemed completely irresponsible after the first crash there. And then to read that post from Malakhov... i'm not surprised he sounds pissed

As far as I know, riders themself pick the line, so it's kinda hard to say, it's completely irresponsible to send riders down that route.
But then again, I do agree this is going way too much into "go big or go home". In my mind, this has nothing to do with skiing anymore, as basically there's no real skiing anymore. It's just jumping as high cliffs as possible, and if you manage to stay on feet you win, otherwise you are taken away with heli. And for this, I agree it's organizer's fault, as judging criteria is literally forcing riders to forget about skiing, and concentrate on steepest most stupid lines you can find down the face, with as high drops as you can still somehow hope you will land and ski out, which in reality happens only to every 5th rider... maybe. If I was counting right, 5 or 6 riders out of 20 were air lifted. If that's not a number to start questioning if this is all fine or something is seriously wrong, then I don't know what it is.
And yes, riders still do have a chance. If they think it's too crazy, they can all ride a bit different, and more normal lines, or they just stand together and say "we are not going up". But that's never going to happen, so next time, we can probably expect 50% of riders being air lifted.

[LiveLarger]

from FWT facebook:
About Dennis "Heedless" Risvoll, he has a broken hand and two fractured vertebras which don’t need surgery. He can move his legs and arms and will be able to stand/ walk as of tomorrow but will need to stay in the hospital for 2 to 3 weeks (in Austria and then in Norway) to rest and have his back healing.
We are sending you all our healing vibes guys! Have a good rest #FWTfamily

Thank god he is going to be ok. That was a nasty crash for sure. There are a few words from him on the Norwegian site Fri Flyt. May read ok in Google Translate.

https://www.friflyt.no/Ski/Risvoll-K...kke-beina-mine

[kootenayskier]

They're all adults, making their on decisions, and rolling with the consequences. Just about every feeder/junior comp I've ever seen has been held in as challenging if not far worse conditions, and carnage has always been the price for biting off more than you can chew. I saw recklessness being punished.

[McDee]

I don't know, may be i'm overreacting. Just looked scary to see one after the other heading for that drop and knowing what was going to happen.

[klar]

They're all adults, making their on decisions, and rolling with the consequences. Just about every feeder/junior comp I've ever seen has been held in as challenging if not far worse conditions, and carnage has always been the price for biting off more than you can chew. I saw recklessness being punished.

I agree that the higher level FWQs can be as bad or worse and yes, recklessness is being punished. However, when almost all of the competitors have the technical skills to potentially win a comp, it seems like recklessness and luck are what decides who ends up on top. Not sure that's a good measure of anything other than recklessness and luck. Or maybe I just don't like watching people crash.

In some ways this seemed like an FWQ comp rather than FWT. Before they started making the cuts I always had the impression that the FWT riders could just aim to stay on the tour and regular top 10 placements were enough to achieve that. The FWQ has always had a very, very small bottleneck for moving up to the big tour. At least in the ski men category go big or go home is the only way to win a comp, which is what you need to do if you want to move up. The mindset for a lot of those guys is you either win, or you crash.

[muted]

As one competitor said before the contest, there is only two winning lines on the face. I'm guessing one was lookers right cliff everyone ate it on. That's riders choice to hit that when they know multiple bombholes will exist, multiple people have fallen on them, and they don't choose a plan b. So the blame is on the riders, or maybe the event venue which only had two good options. But really, these guys can stick almost anything, maybe it was just bad luck this time.

As for Risvol, that was poor awareness of where he was on the slope. really, really bad on his part. But there was two big trees that looked similar on the top of that cliff line, maybe he got them confused and was using one as a marker for take-off????

[goldenboy]

They're all adults, making their on decisions, and rolling with the consequences. Just about every feeder/junior comp I've ever seen has been held in as challenging if not far worse conditions, and carnage has always been the price for biting off more than you can chew. I saw recklessness being punished.

Seriously, we all make our own choices. In tougher conditions sometimes the winning move is to take it down a notch or two and stay on your feet if everyone else isn't.

I've seen plenty of carnage. When the competitor ahead of me in Whistler crashed hard and I could hear through the patrol radio that he wasn't breathing, I sure as hell dialed it back. I can still remember Dak and Oak talking about what a smart line I was taking while the heli was airlifting the previous guy to Vancouver. It was surreal. (He was fine)

[TahoeJ]

As one competitor said before the contest, there is only two winning lines on the face.

That's why I didn't like this venue. No creativity whatsoever.

After all of those crashes on the big cliff, Turdell's winning line was pretty insane. Takes some balls to follow up all of that carnage and hit the same route.

[meter-man]

Step off the gondola. Rotate your head to the skiers right and voila. Kicking Horse rocks.

And here are some pics of the Kicking Horse venues for the 4* and 2* star FWQ comps. http://www.doglotion.com/wrangle-chute-2017-overview

[adrenalated]

I don't at all disagree that the competitors are ultimately responsible for the lines they choose and the risks they take. There's no way to eliminate risk from a big mountain comp and no matter what, some guys will go huge, blow up, and get hurt.

That said, IMO the organizer also has a responsibility to set the competitors up for success. If conditions are heinous, don't put them on a venue where there are limited options and the only lines likely to score well are big airs to shitty landings. Give them a venue with some options for technical, difficult, high-scoring lines without the huge hucks.

[TahoeJ]

^^ Exactly. And to be fair, I thought the previous 2 venues and course setups were excellent. Lots of variety and good techy skiing options as opposed to just meat hucking.

[jacob_dbu]

I don't follow FWT that much, but it is interesting to watch some lines...I find the stuff that TGR puts out - although highly edited - to be much more entertaining.

I agree with the other posts - it's basically who can huck the biggest cliff or craziest line. I'm not sure the history of the comp, but I feel like more style points would make it more fun to watch and less of a shit show at the same time.

I'd rather see someone throw a cork off a pre-determined cliff huck than just drop 50 feet for nothing. But of course since they can't hit the line at least once before this makes it kind of untenable.

[TahoeJ]

^^ Watch the last two events. People were throwing back flips and rotations and also skiing some technical billy goat lines. So much depends on the venue.

[gramboh]

Definitely want to throw some props to Logan Pehota with a huge 2nd place and smooth skiing under pressure... from down near the bottom to make the cut.