Speed vs. style a no-win fight

A young friend who works in a media outlet covering mainstream sports -- that is, sports with balls -- complains about the oft-repeated, rarely questioned "wisdom" that the most challenging athletic test in the world is hitting a major league pitch.

"How do they know that," asks my friend, an Olympic skier in the 1994 Games, "when they don't have a clue about what it's like to ski downhill for 2 miles on a sheet of ice, making turns at 80 miles an hour?"

Since she is also an accomplished tennis player -- as is current World Cup leader Bode Miller -- my friend knows a thing or two about hitting a fast-moving ball, and her comparison is based in broader experience than that of the men who work in her office, none of them being ski racers.

But like most of the debates you hear on sports talk radio, this discussion is meaningless because you can't get anywhere with it. People who listen, call, and get wrapped up in sports talk rarely swap information or logic as much as they do attitude and posturing. Another sportswriter friend, who has invited me to chat on his radio show, simply says of ski racing, "I just can't get into it, man."

Translation: If you can't throw it, kick it, or hit it with a stick, it ain't a sport.

Well, beyond the question of whether top ski racers could hold their own with NFL or MLB players athletically, there is further nuance. Within the sport of skiing, the trash talk is flying these days, players are bristling, and everyone is choosing sides. Here is the issue:

Last fall, one of the premier freeskiers in the world, Tanner Hall, complained about the money and respect that the world pays to top ski racers. Freeskiers like Hall are the twin-tipsters who have followed snowboarders into the pipe and terrain parks and do the big-air gymnastic tricks on skis.

Though they have brought skiing and snowboarding together in a very real way, their attitude is clearly on the boarder side, as Hall's comments make clear.

"I think it's bull, man," Hall said of the attitude that ski racers are superior skiers to free skiers, and thus worthy of the respect and bucks they get. "They went through so much, for sure. But all they do is ski down one icy-ass run. Put me in a downhill, and I might not go as fast as Bode Miller, but I'll make it to the bottom. Put any of those racers in a pipe, and they won't even go."

Earlier this month, when they spoke with reporters at Beaver Creek, Colo., many Alpine World Cup racers took a pass on replying to Hall's comments. Miller, one of the biggest US money racers ever, decided not to weigh into the issue.

But teammate Daron Rahlves, who has the disarming good looks and nature of a Michael J. Fox, fired back at Hall.

"He said he could ski down any downhill on the World Cup," Rahlves said with a snicker. "That he might not be as fast as us, but that a racer would never drop into a pipe. That's bull, because I love to free ski and hit the park. I've done rails before and dropped into the pipe. I hit jumps in the springtime. For a kid like [Hall], at the top of freestyle skiing, to say that, he should be more educated and know what's going on."

This is reminiscent of a row in skiing about two decades ago over who was the greater skier, Glen Plake or Phil Mahre. One was the most recognizable extreme skier in the world (for more than his frozen tie-dyed mohawk), and the other an Olympic gold medalist and overall World Cup winner two years running.

It's likely that there's no way to resolve this if resolution means winning over minds settled on one side or the other. But having seen Mahre ski in back country, I would say he's closer to approaching Plake's level than the reverse. The talent and discipline it takes to run giant slalom gates on an Olympic-winning level takes a lifetime to acquire and is as irreducable as the gift it takes to play a Chopin etude at a concert hall level.

But here is a distillation of the current edition of an old debate, as reflected in this month's Freeskier magazine.

From an e-mailer called zipperSkier: "Bode is no match for Tanner. I would like to see Bode try to switch 630 onto a rail. Tanner could get down the run without hurting himself, Bode would die if he tried a switch 630. Bode might be good, but racing is played out. Freeskiing is the only future skiing has."

(Note to zipperSkier: Tell that to the 45,000 race fans going bonkers over a night World Cup slalom in Shladming, Austria.)

But here's the view from flatspinner: "I don't think that Tanner could hang with Bode or Daron on the big mountain echelon . . . I have seen both rip the big mountain and I have seen Tanner do small lines with no tech stuff . . . My opinion isn't whether racers are better than freeskiers [but] which one is the more complete skier. I'm leaning toward racers because they are generally stronger, more adaptive, and disciplined than freeskiers."

So there it is, snow fans, an argument without a resolution, tailor-made for the ever-boring chatterers on sports talk radio. If only they would talk a little skiing sometime and give us a break from the ceaseless patter about Pedro's meltdown.