Lindsey Vonn steps from Rossignol to Head...

Call it an “epic move,” that money talks or something else, but it's now obvious that Lindsey Vonn has made the fateful switch from Rossi to Head as evidenced on her new Vail Resorts' website. The obvious question is what in the world was Rossignol thinking when they started to cut retainers and bonuses on some of their star performers in their stable? Shouldn't they have tried to at least protect their most visible, charismatic and winning racers and trimmed the extraneous members? One answer is that like the company itself, the race department must have been recently in a major state of flux. I can imagine the discussion with Bruno Cercley saying “You've gotta cut!” then a chorus by Michel Vion and Angelo Maina replying “If that's what you want us to do, we'll cut equally across the board...” So much for saving the “must-keep” champs! Again, this is just a hypothetical scenario that still is quite plausible.

Obviously, ski racing results are not everything and don't always translate into sales on the retail floor, but Lindsey, even more than Bode, had a huge untapped potential for helping the Rossi brands in returning to on-snow prominence. This development is more a “lose-lose” than a “win-win” for a parties concerned. For starters, it's a crack in Rossignol's credibility, a coup for Head, but with a legacy of Rossi imagery that will take a long time to fully flush out and an ambivalent situation for Lindsey. Obviously, Head was thinking differently and might be able to leverage that remarkable athlete if it manages to get its product and distribution's act together...