CALGARY - The father of a Canadian who died in a ski cross race will be one of the speakers at Alpine Canada's safety summit.
Alpine Canada invited Predrag (Bebe) Zoricic to the two-day conference starting Tuesday at Canada Olympic Park in Calgary.
His son Nik died of head injuries sustained in a crash during a World Cup race in Grindelwald, Switzerland, last March. Nik Zoricic was 29.
Ski cross involves four skiers racing each other down a course of bumps and jumps. The first one over the finish line wins.
"It's an attractive sport, viewer-friendly and exciting to do, but it's got to be in a safe environment," Predrag Zoricic said Monday from Toronto.
Alpine Canada can make changes to domestic events and programs, but doesn't have authority over international races. World Cups and world championships are the responsibility of the International Ski Federation (FIS).
Nevertheless, Alpine Canada president Max Gartner believes it's time to put more controls into ski cross, which is a sport that made its Olympic debut in 2010.
"Of course, Nik's tragedy created some real urgency," Gartner said.
"We want to make sure everybody knows we're leading and thinking about doing the right things."
Alpine Canada's first safety summit in May, 2011, tackled issues in alpine racing because of a rash of injuries on the national teams.
"Last year's focus really was on the responsible introduction of downhill or speed racing in Canada," Gartner explained. "The focus on the safety summit this time around is on the responsible introduction of ski cross into the domestic race series."
Although FIS treats ski cross as a freestyle discipline, it falls under Alpine Canada's umbrella domestically and not the Canadian Freestyle Ski Association's.
Many ski cross competitors come from alpine racing.
"(FIS) is starting to realize this is a speed event and you have to start looking at it that way," Gartner said.
"We have to bring a lot of the practices from the alpine side over and treat it as a speed event to make it safer."
Predrag Zoricic, a long-time alpine coach, agrees there needs to be a melding of the minds between alpine, with its years of technical expertise behind it, and the newcomer ski cross.
"The experience is there," he said. "You just kind of have to get all these people together and openly discuss it if we want to keep this sport alive.
"If, God forbid, anything else happened, and we didn't do anything, I think this sport would be finished."
Others scheduled to speak at the summit include Ted Savage, FIS's technical delegate commissioner for Canada, Alpine Canada's ski cross director Dave Ellis and Helmuth Schmalzl, a FIS race director for men's speed events on the World Cup tour.
Both alpine and ski cross athletes expected to attend include Dave Duncan of London, Ont., Calgary's Brady Lehman and Jan Hudec and para-alpine skier Matt Hallat of Coquitlam, B.C.
Zoricic wants to tackle course design and equipment.
Longer run-off areas for skiers going off course, consistent course grooming and maintenance, as well as coaches signing off on courses are among the ideas he wants to bring forward at the summit.
Nik Zoricic flew wide off the final jump and landed directly into safety nets lining the side of the course. Television footage showed Zoricic landing in the nets as his skis and poles were thrown clear.
He had raced on the World Cup ski cross circuit for three years and was competing in his 36th event at the time of his death.
FIS called his death a "terrible, tragic accident", but his father believes it was avoidable.
The Zoricic family said following Nik's death they weren't pursuing legal action, but demanded an investigation into the crash.
"You have to have enough room to get the run-off areas safe," Zoricic said. "Snow has to be groomed after every training run. If it has to be regroomed, then the fencing has to be pulled out. No question about it because overnight conditions can change."
Gartner says the Canadian chair of FIS's freestyle committee, Chris Robinson, will be at the summit.
Zoricic isn't confident recommendations adopted by Alpine Canada after the summit will quickly make their way into FIS events.
"Alpine Canada is going to play this leading role," he said. "They are proactive, way more than FIS.
"They are a really bureaucratic organization. To move something forward takes awhile."
Among the measures Alpine Canada adopted after last year's summit was raising the age at which a skier can race speed events from 16 years old to 17 or 18, depending on their birth year.
Speed events are downhill and super-G, while the shorter, slower races of slalom and giant slalom are called technical races.
Before teenagers can participate in speed races, they must now participate in skills camps to learn how to handle higher speeds.
Gartner estimates 200 skiers were taught those skills at camps held in B.C., Alberta, Quebec and New Brunswick last winter.
© The Canadian Press, 2012
18 Sep, 2012
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Source: http://www.globalnews.ca/Sports/father+of+skier+who+died+in+crash+to+speak+at+alpine+canada+safety+summit/6442716849/story.html
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