After being around to watch the progression of our sport take the winning trick at X Games from a switch 720 to a nosebutter triple cork in just over a decade, I'm really beginning to wonder, what comes next? When will it stop? In another 10 years will people be throwing Quints? (5 flips for those of you that are math challenged) How can we build features to support these tricks? How do we expect people to have style when you have to get so many flips or so many rotations around to win a competition? With all these unanswered questions It seems that we've realized that the sport has come to a point where the unrealistic standards of the competition side of skiing as well as the rate of progression has forced more talented skiers to turn away, and has encouraged the growth of the filming aspect of skiing, as well as pushed emphasis toward individual style. Alas, even this does not seem to be the "bright future of skiing", as the digital age is pushing us away from dvd's and toward online content, which does not draw nearly as much revenue as selling hard copies. It seems that our culture right now has reached a bubble, but what where will we go in the future? What will happen when the bubble bursts? Is there a future of freestyle skiing, or have we passed our prime?
I don't personally agree when you say the complaint level is turning. Skiers away. I agree that people who have skied park for a while and will never get to the comp level may be uninterested but you have to think who is watching these comps. Things like the Olympics spread skiing to a much larger audience. Ther will be a lot of new kids wanting to ski who have only seen comp skiers so that is what they aim for. I personally see a whole new wave of comp skiers coming through for the next Olympics and because they have seen triples thrown that I going to be a minimum standard. This means they will learn these tricks and a it becomes a standard trick style comes back in. Then of course bigger spins and flips will be pushed and te sport will continue to progress.
I certainly agree that the video scene will grow too as a lot of these comp skier unfortunately will not get to the very top an will fall back on other aspects of skiing such as filming.
So a I see it skiing is at a pretty exciting time. We have the potential to grow like we have not done before. I can't wait to see where we are in ten years.
Skiing overall has reinvented itself numerous times. Just before the park skiing movement happened, freestyle skiing was at it's limits. Both aerials and moguls hit their peak and progression stopped. I'm sure when aerial skiers started doing quads they were asking the same questions about progression and what can possibly be done. No one could have predicted the ass kicking snowboarding gave us, and the resulting park movement our sport experienced after.
Look at music as an example. Music has been a part of humanity since possibly the beginning. We, as humans, are always finding ways to create different music without hitting a ceiling. Skiing might have the same future. So, the question shouldn't be "what can we do next?" in terms of park trick progression, but instead "what will skiing become next?". The answer to that will surprise us all.