School me on race skis

[alpinevibes]

You dudes are making me want to mount up these dumpster finds. I’ve got some old FKS Course 14’s that would fit

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Bump. Ended up picking up some 193cm Racetiger GS r27m with mint 997 Drivers on them. Skied them this week (my first time on a "race" ski) and damn were they fun. Super super fun and not demanding. Thanks for the inspiration boys

[Matt D]

Dragging up an old thread and going to highjack it with a question if possible.


Some friends were playing with their new grinding machine and gave my 2011 HEAD GS RDs a bit of love so I'm gonna take those out on the weekend, but it raised a question.

A fair amount has happened to off-piste stuff since the 2010 Hellbents.... Apart from FIS changing the dimensions, what has changed in race skis over the last 15 years?

[ZomblibulaX]

Sidecut and, depending on make/model, where that sidecut lies. Jumping from a >27m ski to a >30m ski is a significant change regardless of how you feel about stated sidecut radius. But a lot of the 21m skis had a rear-biased sidecut (slightly wider tail in relation to tip) so they were super easy to drive across the fall line, while most of the 27m skis started to taper the tail more. The 30m skis are tapered even more, so in addition to there being significantly less sidecut, it's accessible in a very different part of the ski and the turn. But they stivot like a MFer, so there's that.


We don't talk about the 35m gs skis. Those things were horrible.

[Matt D]

Very cool thanks, I had a pair of evil 193 Blizzard Europacup GS skis from the long radius days but I never really used them because they scared the crÄp out of me.

Apart from tuning materials to the sidecut etc. do you know if there has there been any real advances in the construction? Im just intrigued now.

[ZomblibulaX]

Realistically, no, and that's a good thing. Race skis are still made out of ski stuff, unlike so many recreational skis nowadays which are made primarily of popcorn and hope. Most of the exotic materials (carbon, graphene, etc) are used relatively sparingly in favor of hardwoods, titanal, rubber and fiberglass.

[RShea]

Very cool thanks, I had a pair of evil 193 Blizzard Europacup GS skis from the long radius days but I never really used them because they scared the crÄp out of me.Apart from tuning materials to the sidecut etc. do you know if there has there been any real advances in the construction? Im just intrigued now.

There have been some things over the years- stuff like attempts at increased dampening (few -Atomic, Volkl and others had mounted some rails or carbon on the top sheet as one example) or a design trying to make them stiffer or instead of just wood and titanal or titanium in the core, using carbon fiber, and carbon with Titanal layer and then wood topsheet, adding fiberglass also,etc.