Another crackpot letter to the editor in the works

Editor:



While listening to the results of the Birkie  on the radio I was struck by the basic backward  backwoods philosphy inherent in this ski race and how unfair the whole thing is.  We all know the top 1% of the finishers must have inherited their wealth of athletic genes putting the other 99% of the racers at an unfair advantage.  And then there is the training some of the top skiers get from  their corporate sponors that none of the 99% is privy to.  Finally is the lack of practice snow for people who were born or forced to live in the wrong areas.  All of this adds up to a rigged contest where the 1% wins at the expense of the 99% who are citizen-skiers.  


While it is not physically  possible to have thousands of racers crossing the finish line on Main  Street at the same time there are other solutions to the unfairness of this  race.  The simplest soution is to give handicap minutes to people in the 99% based on how much snow there is where they live. This data must be availabe from NOAA.  It would not even mean changing the starting waves.  The only thing that would change is it would take longer to see who won since the first person across the line may be beaten by many people from areas where they could not train as much but their handicap minutes would make them the true winners.  This is only one small step towards getting the basic unfairness out of the race.  Perhaps in future years race officials can devise ways to factor  corporate sponsorships into the handicaps mix and maybe even genetics and have a truly fair race.