Balance is the bottom line in skiing and it can be tough to maintain when the pitch is steep and the snow is uneven. Add in many different body movements occurring at once and the challenge of balance can become confusing. You can settle everything down and create all the balance you want in skiing if you focus on separating your upper and lower body.
Archive for February, 2006
It’s a great moment in sports when an athlete lives up to expectations; the “Fates of Sport” rarely allow things to go the way you wish they would. Seth is truly a genuine and pleasant person, who has trained as hard as any other athlete to put himself in position to compete at Torino 2006. So, yes, it’s a great moment for the USA, the State of Maine, Sugarloaf/USA, and Olympic Gold Medalist Seth Wescott that he successfully tempted the Fates and beat the odds to win the first ever Men’s Snowboard Cross gold medal!
Seth Wescott has won Gold in the Winter Olympics and becomes the first Gold Medalist for the Snowboard Cross event. In the first round of the competition Seth Wescott finished ahead of Francois Boivin, Stefano Pozzolini, and Jonte Grundelius. In the quarter finals Seth Wescott soared past Dieter Krassnig, Francois Bovin (again) and Itaru Chimura.
Moving on to the semi-finals Seth Wescott finished second behind Paul Delerue but ahead of Jason Smith, Dieter Krassnig which was good enough to advance to the finals. Then in the final round Seth Wescott finished ahead of Radoslav Zidek, Paul-Henri Delerue, and Jordi Font for the Gold metal.
An earlier post discussed the four basic styles of learning: doing, thinking, seeing, and feeling. This post explores the thinking learning style. and does so by explaining the same improvement focus as the previous post; isolate your upper body from your lower body.
Heading into the fifth day of competition at the Torino 2006 Games, here’s some quick news items:
American Seth Wescott will be practicing today for tomorrow’s Men’s Snowboard Cross (SBX) event. This will be the first Games where SBX is an event and, as the 2005 World Cup Snowboard Cross Champion, is surely the competitor that everyone will be watching.
The U.S. Olympic Snowboard Team is already off to a great start. Shawn White and Danny Kass took gold and silver, respectively, in the Men’s Halfpipe on Sunday and were followed by Hannah Teeter and Gretchen Bleiler taking gold and silver in the Women’s Halfpipe on Monday. And just in case it seems that snowboarding is becoming mainstream, check out this funny article about the girls ducking a rope and riding a closed trail before the finals.
When is a good day to learn to snowboard? If you are a skier and thinking of trying out snowboarding for the first time, think carefully about which day you will give it a go.
Many people decide they want to learn to snowboard on a day that would otherwise not be the best skiing day. They pick a day that is rainy, foggy, windy, or any other day when the wind or snow conditions are not ideal. I suppose the logic is if they don’t enjoy snowboarding they will not have wasted a “good day” of skiing. Avoid this temptation.
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Today is the Men’s Combined Event at the Torino 2006 Games; the racers will compete in both a downhill and a slalom course. The downhill event will be first followed by the slalom, with the medals going to the racers who can show a broad range of skills by being fast in both. The challenge of fhe Combined is that these two events have very little in common except that they’re both alpine skiing. It takes an extra special skier to be able to excel at two disimilar activities in the same day; we can learn alot about skiing skills by watching the Combined and comparing how the racers change their movements between the downhill and slalom.
An earlier post discussed the four basic styles of learning: doing, thinking, seeing, and feeling. This post explores the feeling learning style. and does so by explaining the same improvement focus as the previous post; isolate your upper body from your lower body.
The Torino 2006 Opening Ceremonies lived up to expectations; it was surely an amazing and dramatic melange of many images and sounds. One of the themes of the ceremony was passion, consistent with the Torino medals with their center hole exposing the passion of the athletes. The costumes included brilliant white by Giorgio Armani to red-suited speed skaters who had flame trailing from their helmets (representing the Sparks of Passion). The celebrities included Sofia Loren and Susan Sarandon, who helped to carry the Olympic flag into the stadium. The productions included a mass of dancers forming a beating heart and a tribute to the Alps including dancing cows. The music ranged from a cover of John Lennon’s “Imagine” by Peter Gabriel and Yoko Ono to a grand aria (Nessun Dorma) by Luciano Pavarotti. And they even worked a bright red Ferrari Grand Prix racing car into the event!
And who lit the Olympic Cauldron?
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The men’s downhill events at Torino 2006 are today; our hopes are with Bode and Darren for fast snow and faster times. Since everything goes to an extreme when you’re going 86 mph, (135 kph), you can learn a lot about balance by watching downhillers as some movements become very obvious. Balance is key at that speed; to understand more about balance in skiing, watch where the racer’s hands are.