Skiing

John no offense but you are wrong. I'm actually living in middle of Alps (well not above tree line) and I do ski regulary there, even on training or competition courses which are closed for public and are everything but flat. And as I said... 85+mph is not realistic speed. Especially for someone from English military
No offense to anyone (including and especially original poster and members of Royal Engineers) but I actually saw those guys skiing. Besides that I have pretty good friend who was member of this unit, and also member of British National Biathlon team, so I actually know their skiing capabilities. And they (and their equipment) are not really anywhere near World cup skiers level But I guess that's completely normal this. As I said... alpine skiing is fast, but not really that fast as you are telling.

Well, the slopes of Squaw Valley are where the world speed records have been set, and still are tested...

I keep saying, that you need not have to sustain the 85mph speed for a long duration of time to have skied at 85mph...even if it is just for a portion of the 100 meter drop that this guy is entering into, it is very possible...

I'd never under estimate the ability of a stranger...

primoz, this might interst you, too...I just found some interesting info through a search engine...check this out...

(Squaw Valley and Kirkwood are both ski areas in the Lake Tahoe Area of the Sierra Nevada's...I lived there and skied every day for many years...)

Just out of curiosity, I Google'd "Speed Skiing World Record"...I came up with this small portion of an article...It's right bellow:

This is the article:
John duGan
Fastest Non-Motorized Human Sport ON Earth

I have competed in the sport of speed skiing for 12 years, professionally for the last five. Internationally I am ranked 14th out of 100 professional racers. During the summers, I am cross training for ski racing while operating my water-ski school in Lake Tahoe, California. For the last 10 winters I am based in Europe and more recently in VARS, France near the famous "La Grave" extreme ski resort. Vars Ski Resort is host to one of the Speed Ski Pro Tour stops in Europe. Besides being one of the largest and fastest tracks on the circuit, this resort offers a unique racing advantage in that a competitor can train daily on The local World Record capable Speed Ski track.

The Current World Record is an awesome 152 MPH set in 1997 at VARS Ski Resort. My Personal record that day was set at 145 MPH only 7 MPH off the World Record. The difference then was that of my hi-speed confidence and experience, something I have since addressed in training. Speed skiing for about ten years, with 6 years on the US Speed Ski Team, resulted in a lot of experience that has evolved into a formidable professional quest for speed. The following is a short version of my Speed Skiing experience and Career -to- date, and my future goals;

THanks for all your comments - it's been interesting to read you thoughts.

I photographed the scene between my own training runs, and we did have a speed camera with us, admittedly not on the day this picture was taken, but a day later on the same course. Our speeds were quick up pas the 60mph mark but certainly not in the 85mph area. In our downhill competition I maxed out at 117kph (about 74mph) on the same slope to give you an idea (I was in the top 5 too).

As far as our kit & ability levels - just to settle this arguement - we have a very mixed bag of abilities; we have the odd one or two who would feature in our national team if they had the time to dedicate to training (our military duties clearly cause issues here). There are others who, like myself, are experienced skiiers who can do the competiton thing & do reasonably well, but are certainly not FIS level!! The final group are the guys (mostly junior soldiers) who, for the most part, haven't skiied anywhere near as long as some of us luckier individuals.

Our kit for those in the first teams, are usually souced direct from the manufacturer's FIS team and therefore we are usually skiing on the same skis as those in the FIS championships (although we don't give these to those starting in the sport) so equipment isn't really an issue here.

Back to the photos, the problem I've had is that no matter what I've tried if I'm in shadow then I end up with either grey or blue snow and have issues with getting a quick enough shutter speed such that I don't get a blured image. Any thoughts for working in shadows (appart from the obious - i.e. don't!!) I've a couple more of my better later results for you further comments....

Byte size: ZERO | Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

Byte size: ZERO | Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

John there's difference between speed skiing (usually called just KL) and normal downhill, super-g, gs and slalom races. KL is done on 1 kilometer straight track with extreme drop (it really looks like it's free fall) and speeds are around 250km/h. They have very specific equipment and it has very little to do with "normal" skiing. There's no corners no jumps no nothing, just 1 km long drop. And yes speed there is easily way over 200km/h. But on normal skiing tracks such speed is not possible to achive.
PS: Speed skiing was actually on Olympics in 1992 in Albertivelle and was held in Les Arcs which is one of most famous speed skiing tracks. But otherwise it's not really popular thing

Great Tony,

Very respectable showing, as 74 mph will certainly rattle anyones bones...Primoz, shoots snow...he would have more input in the general area...I'll be shooting birds and deer and turkey in the snow this winter...

Presently, I primarily shoot at a local concert venue so my snow eyes haven't adjusted yet...I'm getting older than i wish for skiing "like a bat out of hell"..and checking out a concert performance and taking a bunch of photos is a lot of fun...I'd recommend it to anyone, needing a change of pace...

Make the best of the coming holidays...cheers...

PS: My Father worked in the underground with the help of the British Military during WW II...He more recently received two Presidential Commendations from the past two Polish Presidents, for his efforts during that Big War.

First one of those two photos is best one in this thread... at least for me. It still has few "problems" but I like it most. One thing is cropping. You should keep skis on photo and you could crop much more from top, left and bottom. Another issue is wb. I know it's not easy to get right wb on snow, especially when it's in shadow. But if nothing else you can filter this cyan tone with really little work in PS. Otherwise it's right timing.
Second one is a bit better when it comes to wb, even though it's still a bit too cold. You missed right timing a little bit, and once again if it would be up to me, I would crop it tighter.
And once again... try to overexpose for 2/3 or even 1 stop next time. You get nicer color snow (yes I know with less details since it's overexposed, but snow is not most important thing on photo) and better lit skier.