Dual Moguls Competition

Julie, Greg Glynis and I went over to watch the finals of the Dual Mogul competition at Deer Valley.  Like so many events in Park City, it was free and the paper reported 10,000 in attendance.  We were lucky to have nice weather this year.  Some of the competitions have been held in near zero temperatures.

The single mogul competition is one person racing down the bumped uphill, doing two jumps along the way. Your score is based on speed, style and jump difficulty.  High score wins. For the dual moguls, you are competing against the person next to you. The finals started with 16 competitors for both men and women, which was whittled down to 8, then 4, then 2, then a winner.

It hurts my poor knees to watch these people.  Their legs are slamming up and down like pistons with a speed that I could never imagine replicating. I liked watching the women, who in addition to the normal rapid body movements, often had pony tails flying every which way.

You can see how they keep their bodies pointed straight down the hill and twist their knees and feet underneath them.

These two guys were coming off the bottom jump, about 50 feet from the finish.  Can you get any closer?

I'm not sure what part of human nature makes us so focused on watching the unfortunate parts of competition, but it definitely exists.  People watch the wrecks in Nascar.  They watch the fights in hockey. Sure enough, with the mogul competition, the crashes can be the most exciting.  We saw a number of wrecks, but in every case, the competitors got up and skied down to the bottom.

Blasting through the moguls is hard enough without having one ski up in the air.

He took a big fall, but finished the race, and only a little bit behind the winner.  I was amazed at how quickly they would pop back up and start skiing, even though they knew they had lost.

You can't even see this person.  The snow on the left simply exploded as the skier plowed into a mogul at high speed.

Yes, the sponsorships make all of my pictures look like a Visa commercial.  I understand the need for money to fund the competition, but it just seemed like too much.

This guy was apparently feeling the emotions of the crowd and just plowed through one of the signs. Unfortunately they are able to put them right back up.

The competition was exciting to watch and it's a pleasure to live in a place where the best athletes in the world come to compete.