Telemark Talk / Telemark Tips Forum

Let's see how different.

Telehiro:

[video][/video]

Yas:

[video][/video]

Ahahahah! SO funny that you chose the CANSI video to compare with you guys...! (CANSI is the highest official authority in telemark here in Canada... Well, after the XCD Knights of course... ; )

No offense to all the Cansi members (including myself), but Telehiro's skiing is A MILLION times better than the Cansi guy... In the first vid, Telehiro is able to carve super short radius turns with long radius skis. How rad is that!?! He's barely bending the knees, but still he's keeping the right pressure on BOF. Stacking up the power in the whole leg. A real expert. While in the second vid, the guy is skidding every single turn with heavy gear and performance skis, and stretching his legs way too much in the back. Look at his back leg, his ball of foot is not even touching the ski. Not even his toes! And he's a very respected telemark instructor, demonstrating the proper telemark technique for CANSI... Representing the way we should ski in Canada...

They're both very good skiers. And they both have a nice form and nice balance. But personally, I think Telehiro is a much, much better skier. He could ski the way the Cansi guy is skiing easily, but the Cansi guy could never ski the way TH is skiing... The CANSI guy still has a lot to learn... It looks terribly boring... But Telehiro looks like he's having lots of fun!

Both great skiers; I don't think you can say one is a much better skier than the other from those short clips. Telehiro's style definitely appears much smoother and graceful. He's not going as low and the second person, by going low, may be over-emphasizing his turns for the camera. Who knows.

And the gear looks essentially the same, at least as far as I can tell.

The snow differs between the two clips. Telehiro makes it look easy, the Canadian guy makes it look hard. In most things, the guy that makes it look easy is usually a true expert. Both ski well IMHO.

LJ, man, there's CANSI and there is CANSI; not the same... Look at this guy:



Meet Denis Vézina, from Le Massif... A great skier and instructor. Telemark level 3.

But I am also a fan of Telehiro. There is something of a very subtle and very smooth skid in between each turn. Makes it very fluid...

What does my untrained, non-ski instructor eye see?

The first gets on his edges earlier and rotates less, therefore skids less. He just kicks out the tails right at the end to keep his speed in check.

Look at how much rotation the second guy has before he sets his edge... It's not going to hold. Almost all his turning is unweighted.

They both got down the hill and stayed up - they both pass my CANSKI test

We can notice the difference in up-and-down movement between two guys. Such vertical movements don't contribute much to turns in terms of efficiency; in fact they could be drawbacks to quick switch-over of the turns. Telehiro may know that mechanism well and try to allocate his power to turn as much as possible. He seems to know the knacks for utilizing his hip joints.

The difference of boots between two guys seems to have an affect on the efficiency of turns also. Telehiro seems to be on T3. On the other hand Yas appears to be on T2/T1 or other similar high-cuff boots. The height of the cuffs and stiffness of materials affect the degree of the freedom of ankles, and that freedom directly relates to the efficiency of turns. That may be factor that many telemark skiers underestimate. Actually telehiro can turn more quickly and elegantly when he is on leather boots:

[video][/video]

Oups... I got the wrong vid... Look instead at this one. You will see the short radius at 0.40 sec...

Wooah, that's some SUPER NICE skiing Rod! Perfect perfect perfect! Everything's perfect, the way instructors should be! Personally, it's not the kind of skiing I like at all, but from a technical (and CANSI) point of view, you can't beat that...!

If Telehiro had 13m radius skis like Denis Vezina, he would rip even more!

But hockey-stopping your way down like it's 1985 like the guy sporting the red CANSI coat is just pointless, unless you ski very steep terrain or trying to teach something... (Which is something I actually do myself when I teach people who are new to telemark...)

CIMA wrote:The height of the cuffs and stiffness of materials affect the degree of the freedom of ankles, and that freedom directly relates to the efficiency of turns. That may be factor that many telemark skiers underestimate.

I agree with this 100%. That's what I like about the Excursions: low, soft cuff/tongue and the soft plastic material that they are made out of. Compared to a bigger boot like the Ener-G or T1/T2, you can really flex and move your ankles in Excursions. You must be centered in your balance to ski these smaller, softer boots well in steep conditions, and even more so in leathers, but the added ankle flex really gives you a better feel for the snow and turns.