The perversion of skiing...

I fell on this New York Times article that told the story of Laís Souza, a young ski aerialist from Brazil that was drafted while being just a top level, two-time Olympian gymnast. Even though she had never skied before, she was invited to become a member of the Brazillian Freestlyle team competing at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi.

After taking what must have been a crash course to become “sort of a skier”, she was getting ready for the Games in Park City, when her coach took her to a fairly steep, but not forbidding mogul slope, where she fell, sustained a neck injury and became a paraplegic. This is terrible, sad and this made me wonder: “Why?”.

The poor Souza got there simply because Brazil felt compelled to become a serious player in winter sports even though there is no skiable place in that country and did everything possible to reverse-engineer a skier out of a gymnast.

With her and some other similar team members, the country would be represented, the officials would walk in the stadium during the opening and closing ceremonies and they'd think that they had become bona fide “mountain people” while the IOC and the International Ski Federation must have blessed this idiotic move.

Right, the more participants, the merrier! A sad story indeed that shows the perverse evolution of skiing which becomes a spectacle instead of real sport practiced by people who grow into it and most importantly, we are passionate about it! This is just one reason why I think aerials may be okay for the traveling circus, but have no place in the world of skiing and should be eliminated.

This said, I am very lone voice...