Following the Interski Congress in 2011, we asked the Interski Team the following question: Who stands out most and why? Here is their answer.

Warren Jobbitt

Other than Canada, I saw some amazing skiers from Switzerland, Austria, Japan, France and Korea.  My impression was the Swiss had skiers that come from a racing background and what they could do with their skis was far superior to that of the other countries.  However, they struggled to demonstrate a technique that could be copied by basic skiers.  The French seemed to be a bit more disciplined than 2007 and in contrast the Austrians seemed to be a bit more free or loose in their skiing.  The Japanese are always great skiers. Their technique is quite different, but they still ski well.  The Korean’s play with their skiing and seem to be open to experimentation.  More to come from the detailed reports…..

I believe the Swedes have a great teaching approach.  It is very similar to ours where they are student-centered.  The Japanese are trying to find a technique that is easy to learn and also easy on the body.  Trying not to twist in the joints and create forces that can injure an aging skiing demographic is one of their main goals.

Russ Wood

As far as a standard goes no one really to be honest, maybe France, but so would we if we chose our team by setting a SL course and taking the fastest 10 people including all our WC skiers – I think that many countries had individual great skiers and the better the skiers are the more similar they look. On a bigger picture I think Japan stands out as they have changed their technique almost 100% because of the aging demographic, not sure I agree with everything they are doing but it stands out.

Maggie Graham

Somewhat biased as I did a lot of research on this country…

From an organizational and a methodology, the Interski Deutschland (Germany) have done a great job of keeping their key technical skiing elements simple and present them in a way that is coherent and organized.   I like their emphasis on the learning environment and the use of tactics such as terrain throughout the skier progression.  Also, the idea of using a teaching/training approach that is holistic is really appealing as they create life-long skiers with the skiing and decision making skills to deal with a variety of situations.

After watching the technical comparison (great idea by the way), I am really impressed with the Swiss skiers, performance skiing, using the big joint moving inside the arc.  I am interested to see the intermediate parallel runs as the French, the Swiss skied quite differently at lower speeds, with demonstrations that did not resemble the same mechanics at higher speeds and would be difficult for the general public to emulate.

Canada has a good mix of all the right ingredients from the teaching approach to the skiing.  I think that the information and reports from the other countries will enable us to refine our existing methods, simplify as required as we move forward as an organization.

Emerson Brooks

Teaching:  I attended Norway, Korea, and Finland for the on snow sessions.  I was impressed with Finland because they based everything on the quality of learning. Their approach was similar to ours and they had great results with the group. They were able to keep technical talk simple and allowed us to ski.  The motivated and kept the group engaged.  This was not the case with the other sessions I attended.

Skiing:  I skied with the France on an ENSA exchange a few years back and still find them to be simple and effective in regards to generating a performing ski.  The Swiss and Koreans also had great technical demonstrations.  By enlarge I felt these countries where able to utilize the rotational axis to get some impressive ski performance results.  The Koreans used their traditional Tae -Kown –Do background and used this as a means to stack and move through the arc where as the French and Swiss would use tork (separation) as a means to move through the arc.  The timing of separation and amount was different between the French and Swiss.  The French seemed to use less than the Swiss and the timing with the release of the ski was different.

Casey Bouius

There are a few here, and I didn’t get a chance to see everyone or fully understand every approach due to language but here are my thoughts.  The Swiss over all were very impressive.  Their demos on the show night were awesome.  Fast, precise and technically very strong, they showed big air from almost every member in the park session.  Even watching their free skiing with lots of performance and laying it over.  There were differences in team mates; some very visibly better then others.  Mind you they had quite a few world cup decedents on their team.  The same results with the French.  At the teaching I think that Sweden had a great system, which incorporated a lot of the same stuff we do, they are still working on it to get to a final product.  As I had mentioned before the Swiss had neat integration to create a complete skier.  This incorporated a wide range of skills in different terrain and approaches.  Over all I would say that the Swiss stood out the most when you take in skiing and teaching approaches combined.

Ollie Nagy

There are some interesting ideas out there! Some are more intuitive and some make more sense than others. It was nice to listen to all the approaches and now come back to Canada and experiment with it.  There are some interesting approaches/theories that we could benefit from.
San Marino girls with their sexy finish and the Slovenian team with the James Bond theme.
Austrian’s choreography – just due to the sheer volume of people they had on their team they could demonstrate very cool formations on the demo slope.
Swiss team jumping in sinc (on the big jump!) – that was impressive.