2006 Independent Ski Tests

First and foremost, I want to use this space to thank Joe Darwin, Ward & Kim McLain and the whole test Team for a fantastic weekend. There were a number of skiers in the test that I had spoken to or emailed over the years but had never met. Also, there were old friends at the test whom I had not seen in 10 years. It was great to spend time with everybody.

When first I called Todd Ristorcelli at WaterSki Magazine to tell him what I was doing, I think he thought I must have no idea what I was in for. As it turns out, I didn't. There were plenty of lessons learned and unanticipated organizational hitches. Since it all seems to have worked out pretty well, I am now wondering about 2007. Yea, I am a glutton for punishment. 

In the end I feel that the rankings and reviews are as fair and honest as is possible. The reviews are absolutely not my personal opinion. These reviews are the compilation of the skier's comments, the numerical ratings and notes I took on the test weekend. As I compiled the reviews I made every effort not to flavor the text with my own bias. If you had asked me for my opinion before I went to the tests I would have ranked a number of skis differently. My point is that these results reflect how the chips fell.

The data is the data. I excluded skiers 13, 14 & 15 because they only reviewed 2 skis each. This did not significantly change the rankings and I feel that this improved the validity of the whole data set. What I learned from looking over the data was that one more skier on any one ski could swing a skis position in rankings. I presented the data with 2 decimal places but want to encourage the reader to not get caught up in 10ths or 100ths.

As for analyzing the results, I wish to caution the reader not to jump to conclusions. There is not a best ski in the group. Each of the skis won the heart of at least one of the skiers. Some of the skiers gave high marks when asked for purely numerical reviews but gave less glowing written reviews. The opposite is also true. This is a case where the analytical result is one thing but the non-analytical feeling of the skier is different. This is the reality of testing sporting goods. There are simply no boolean answers.