Mancuso vs. Vonn

Much is being made of a rivalry between Julia Mancuso and Lyndsey Vonn.

I am connected to the women via Facebook and Twitter (for whatever that is worth). So I base this post on what I am seeing of their public thoughts and from what I know of skiing and competitors.

I have addressed what it is like to have to rerun a race. It is not something you like to do it costs you race-juice to run, race juice that takes rest and calories to replenish.
This is nothing but hyper-inflated shinola. Just because they are both on the US Ski Team does not mean they are long and close friends and I guess that is the way all top level teams are. The teammates are not necessarily close to each other and in fact may have a long history of competing against each other. While we get a mild buzz when one of our Olympians earns a medal and more so when two do, I am sure the lesser medal winner views it as a loss. Hard to image but true. My brother may make better times on the NASTAR course than I do, but my primary view of the matter is to aim for knocking him down the podium!

Think too of this. Most of the reporting I see is coming from tweets! Twitter has its place in one’s promotion toolbox, in fact, I believe Twitter is an excellent promotion tool. However, Twitter is all about headlines and reading too much into tweets is folly. If you are not familiar with Twitter know this: you have 180 characters, and by characters we mean letters, numbers, punctuation, and symbols. How much true meaning can you convey in 36 words (@5 characters per word)? Those 36 words include references to friends and categories you want your tweet to be organized into.

I guess though, this is not the worst for US skiing. While a lake may be small smart people can make it into a big deal by dubbing it the world’s smallest lake.

I could care less what Julia or Lyndsey say to quote-hungry journalists or ignorant masses trying to lap up the water drips of their fame, what I am looking for is the US Ski Team to figure large in the Alpine ski events not just in Vancouver but on the entire World Cup tour. It all comes down to trying to get people to focus on the skiing.