My biggest gripe with slope courses is that there is truly only 1 "line". Sure, there's usually a box option alongside a rail feature and a lot of courses feature jumps with two different takeoffs—and sometimes a jib option alongside of the takeoff—but at the start gate, all the competitors know that the podium runs will be pretty much identical save how many degrees of spin they contained, and how smoothly those degrees were...spun.
I'd rather see a slopestyle contest that is much more progressive with a true diversity of features. I'd like a course to have small jumps (or jumP...as in one of them), rails, an urban stairset/ledge, wall ride, a tap/stall feature, a roller/knuckle, a butter pad, boxes, some kind of gap/drop, a quarter pipe, a hip, etc., as opposed to what appears to be a nearly universal 2-3 jib into a 3-5 jump line slope format we see.
What makes "street" comps (skate, bmx, inline) so compelling and exciting is that riders all approach the course in distinctive ways and choose vastly different lines based on their own ideas about flow, rhythm, and capitalizing on their strengths. Basically, choosing a line, and being creative is ESSENTIAL to winning a street event. Obviously, skiing is a downhill sport and creating a course with a multitude of options is limited relative to other action sports where turning around and rehitting features is an option. But, in principle, it's possible to design a course with this idea in mind.
Bringing this sort of creative element to ski slope events and forcing riders to make choices as opposed to just tucking into the next kicker preparing to spin as fast as possible after barely touching down on a "cannon box" (ugh.), would make for much more enjoyable contests for everyone involved—other than gapers who are only interested in flips done over big jumps at high speeds.
How cool would it be to see riders like Max Hill, Adam Delorme, Brady Perron, Phil Casabon, and other versatile shredders who don't spend summers on water ramps and trampolines dominate a competition scene? A course like this would truly reward those riders with a staggering amount of diversity in their abilities.
Scoring would probably be a bit (read: a loooot) more subjective, but maybe any sort of pathetic attempt to "quantify" tricks relative to one another could be thrown out the window, and scoring would be based solely on overall impression....maybe even rider judged? Let's face it...the results wouldn't be any more controversial than they already typically are.
Thoughts?
