Sport Carve is the category that tackles all those excuses your friends have about (not) going skiing--and throws them out on their ear. You know the excuses: the sport is too expensive, it's too difficult to learn, you have to practise consistently in order to make any progress...
The fact is, sport skis are so good at getting intermediate skiers into carving that they've significantly reduced the learning curve for beginners, and have allowed many terminal intermediates to make the leap into black-diamond skiing.
Now, if you're an expert skier and plan on not reading any further, do yourself (and the ski industry) a huge favour. If you have friends who haven't skied in years, invite them to your favourite mountain for a demo day just so they can test skis in this category. Then try to wipe the huge grin from their faces when they find out just how easy skiing has become.
Finally, if you're an advanced skier who's getting beaten up by race carvers or fatty freeride skis, give a sport carve ski a turn or two. A surprising number of our expert testers found some of these skis were well above their category level in overall performance. Check out the stats and comments--this is a wide-ranging category and we allowed manufacturers a lot of leeway in submitting models for what they believed constituted a sport-category ski as long as they kept the price tag under $600.
The run
Like the B.C. freeway of the same name that connects the Lower Mainland to Kamloops, Sun Peaks' Coquihalla run is a mountain cruiser extraordinaire. A steady, wide-open intermediate pitch, Coquihalla dumps out onto the flat but cruisy Five Mile run--perfect for testing the speed capacity of these recreational roadsters.
The conditions
This was the best day of our testing week, with temperatures staying below freezing and keeping the snow firm for this portion of the test.
Coquihalla's northeast-facing aspect helped to
preserve the snow, too.
Test criteria
Acceleration: once the turn is initiated, how
quickly it is completed.
Carving: similar to edge hold, how well the ski holds on an arced turn without chattering or letting go.
Course: how the ski performed in the gates.
(Race skis only: quickness in slalom; carving and edge hold for GS.)
Initiation: how easily the ski enters a turn when
tip pressure is applied.
Long radius: how the ski holds its arc or line at speed in long, sweeping carved turns.
Quickness: how well the ski reacts to
directional changes.
Short radius: when pressure and steering are applied, how well and how quickly the ski completes a turn.
Stability: as speed builds in a turn, how the ski feels (as in shaky or loose vs. quiet or firm) underfoot as well as in the tip.
Versatility: how well the ski does in both
short- and long-radius turns at different speeds and different snow conditions.
