LETTERS
Austria’s Michael
Walchhofer heads
toward a new
break-away gate
panel at Beaver
Creek on Dec. 4.
Safety Check
Enjoyed Hank’s piece on ski racing injuries in the Dec. 16 issue
of SR. One of the FIS initiatives on ski racing safety not men-
tioned in the article is the new homologation standards for gate
panels on the WC. These new standards require the panels to
release (in the case of hooking an arm, head or straddling) with
less than ∏ of the force previously specified, while maintaining
their ability to stay on the poles under “normal impact” by the
skier. Reliable Racing Supply, along with a handful of European
gate panel producers, had barely six months between the FIS
Congress in Antalya to the opening races in Europe and North
American to conceptualize, design, test and ultimately manufac-
ture gate panels in time for the 2010-11 season. Change is good,
and for our company we took this as an opportunity to think out
of the box with our design. The new Break-A-Way 2012 WC
gate panels made their debut at the Birds of Prey DH training
runs, SG and GS events. Although they successfully passed the
FIS homologation in the laboratory, they had seen limited use in
the field up until the actual event on that week. The panels have
new features never before seen, and most of the course crews
at first glance said to me, “these will never stay on — they’ll
never work” (to which I replied “we’ll see about that”). But by
the end of the GS on Sunday, all of the naysayers approached
me with high-fives on how impressively they actually did work!
However, the most revealing test (and the one that made Guen-
ther Hujara most impressed and pleased) was when bib No. 29
in the SG buried his head directly into one of our new panels
doing around 100 kilometers per hour and plowed right through
as if it wasn’t even attached to the poles. Not even a flinch. In
Guenther’s opinion, had these been “old specification panels,”
the results for No. 29 could have been catastrophic. Mission ac-
complished!
I’ve attached a video [at right] for your edification.
Best regards,
John Jacobs, President
Reliable Racing Supply, Inc.
EMBED VIDEO
