Olympics events and natural terrain

I'm a fan of natural terrain, not so much of groomed runs and totally opposed to artificial features, from half pipes to giant jumps and skier-cross courses. My personal opinion is that over-groomed and “fake” ski terrain is “numbing” the sport and robbing from its original, natural purpose. Would you enjoy skiing on an evenly shaped slope, without nook and crannies, vegetation and a host of natural “surprises” and variations?

I personally wouldn't; we rightly say that variety is spice of life. Modern, overly groomed skiing is a curse! It's not just new events like boarder-cross or half pipe that fall victim of that homogenization, but traditional ones like downhill, giant slalom and even slalom. So called “classic” downhill courses have progressively been emasculated and only the venerable Hahnenkamm race course in Kitzbühel remains close to its roots.

“Designer downhills,” most of them engineered by Switzerland's Bernhard Russi, have sprung up from Beaver Creek to Snowbasin and Val d'Isère. Thirty years ago, race runs were closely reproducing the terrain below with their pesky and irregular little “waves,” pummeling a skier's leg and further increasing the technical difficulty - not necessarily the danger - but equalizing chances between light and heavy weight skiers.

Today, the bigger a ski racer is, the greater chances of standing at the top. Jean-Claude Killy, Gustavo Thoeni or Henry Duvillard wouldn't stand a chance on today's downhill courses. My sense is that flurry of synthetic environment will breed sameness, breakneck speed and eventually lead to spectators' boredom. The problem is that from the International Ski Federation to the International Olympic Committee, officials who should do something about that sad state of affairs are asleep at the switch...