SOMETHING IS ROTTEN IN CANADA

Here goes, another rant. This one is a doozy. So sad that it falls squarely into the WTF? category. When did Ski Canada become a pompous, self righteous, indignant sell-out of a publication?

First came the simply idiotic article regarding Bode Miller. So indignant that words fail me. It sucked so bad that the respected ex-Crazy Canuk Todd Brooker (who now works for Head skis, who also happens to be the brand that Bode Miller skis on) felt compelled to write an open letter that I can only quote, it was so spot-on.

TO:     Ski Canada
FROM: Todd Brooker
RE:       Doug Sack

I am really embarrassed for you guys at Ski Canada. To think that you are still publishing articles by such poor journalists like Doug Sack, a guy who knew nothing about ski racing even 25 years ago when he wrote about the Canadian team that I raced with.

In his most recent article, he attempts to discredit not only one of the greatest racers to compete in World Cup, but one of it’s most influential personalities, Bode Miller. Having the nerve to write that Bode Miller has “embarrassed the world of skiing with his bent and twisted attitude” shows Sack’s lack of knowledge and his lack of respect for the sport that he is apparently trying to defend.

To Doug’s point about Miller abandoning “the World Cup not once but twice”, I would like to remind people of what really happened since they may not already know. Bode Miller took a break away from the final World Cup races last season leading up to the Olympic Games to go golfing with his brother, who had spent multiple weeks in serious condition in a hospital recovering from a motorcycle accident and a severe head injury. Since Bode had been competing, he had not visited with his brother more than once until that week. The four day break he took away from racing was at the insistence of his coaches and the US Team who felt he desperately needed the rest, physically and mentally. They had repeatedly asked him to skip races earlier in the season.

But strictly from a skiing and not a personal perspective, again let me jog your memory about Bode Miller. Coming off his Olympic debut in Salt Lake, where he performed successfully under tremendous home town pressure, from the start of the 2003 season until the week prior to the Olympic Winter Games in February 2006 when Sack says he “abandoned” the circuit, Bode Miller had competed in every single World Cup race on the schedule, in every alpine discipline, without missing a single start, for 3 1/2 straight years!! In all, Bode Miller raced in 138 consecutive World Cup races, in every race on the schedule, including 5 events in each of the 2 World Championships, where he won a total of 3 Gold Medals in 2003 at St. Moritz and 2 Gold Medals in 2005 at Bormio. During this time, Miller also became the first man in history to win a World Cup race in each of the alpine disciplines within the first 8 races of the season in 2005, much faster than the 3 others who had previously won in all events. Oh yeah, did I mention his 2 Silver Medals at the Olympic Games in Salt Lake in 2002, his 23 World Cup victories or his Overall World Cup Title in 2005, the first for an American man since Phil Mahre last won in 1983!!!! In fact, he has been so successful over these last five years that Bode Miller has finished no worse than 4th in the Overall World Cup rankings and 8 times has finished in the top 3 in the individual discipline titles since 2002!!

This kind of racing commitment and these amazing skiing records have never been accomplished by anyone else in the history of World Cup skiing because over the course of World Cup history, there have only been a handful of racers as talented or dedicated to the sport as Bode Miller has been through his career, with any chance to achieve what Bode has done! In speaking with my circle of contemporaries like Zurbriggen, Mahre, Klammer, Girardelli and others, we believe Miller to be the greatest racing innovator in terms of his technique, his line through the gates, as well as the equipment advances he’s assisted in engineering over the last 5 years alone!

You might believe that Miller’s behavior in Torino and Sestrierre last season “gave ski racing a black eye” and I can’t argue your right to hold that kind of opinion.

But Sack shows his ignorance by adding, “the good news for Canadian ski fans is that Miller will be long gone before 2010.....Bode Miller isn’t man enough to ski on a racecourse named for Crazy Canuck Dave Murray”. Give your head a shake!!!!!

Dave Murray was a friend and a teammate of mine for many years. Not only was he a great ambassador for skiing, he also appreciated and respected people with talent and enthusiasm for skiing and for life. I can’t imagine ‘Murr’ feeling anything less than honored to have the best racers in the world, including Bode Miller, compete on an Olympic course in Whistler named in his memory.

Any respect I had for Ski Canada Magazine has been lost by your lack of judgment in publishing articles in such poor taste and written by people with such poor knowledge of the sport. It’s a shame that people like Doug Sack don’t spend more energy promoting successful racers on the World Cup with their limited skills and your magazine doesn’t publish ski racing writers who are actually in the know about the sport!

-Todd Brooker

Well put, Todd.

We used to be big fans of Ski Canada, good people doing a great job under difficult conditions, flying the flag, fighting the good fight, promoting a sport that is in desperate need of promoting...

Until 2006. We recently had the "pleasure" of finding out that Ski Canada sold it's soul to a large corporate competitor of ours and now included Special Make-Up (SMU) skis in a separate "advertorial" ski test. Basically a thinly disguised infomercial for skis that are unavailable anywhere else than at that same big-box retail operation, skis that are in most instances no more than dressed-up low end skis with high-end looking graphics... Not sup rising that in the 2006 "test" they went to the point of having Sprot-Check employees test Sprot-Check skis. Simply amazing. The equivalent of having Fischer guys test Fischer skis, WTF?. All the while allowing its readers to believe that these "inserts" were actual tests and not simple advertising. same graphics, same look... But like I said: an advertorial.

Allowing a corporate behemoth to do what it has been struggling to do for decades: To give credibility to something that deserves no credibility, skis built and chosen only to maximize profit. Journalistic integrity be damned, money talks. Shame on you Ski Canada for selling out to the big box. Like the guy said: Buyer beware. Needless to say we've now joined the multitude of shops who now refuse to offer Ski Canada. Who would imagine that we're left with US mags as the sole remaining beacons of journalistic integrity? Yeesh.