It was at an aerials competition here in good ol’ Ski Town USA in 1976 that my oldest brother, David, went for an airwalking quadruple daffy, crossed his skis on number three, and woke up in the hospital. Later, we’d know this variation as the “Screamin’ Seaman,” but it’s a mistake you make unintentionally only once.
So why is the daffy – that glorious, crotch-ripping badge of courage involving one or more midair splits – tainted with dorkdom? Pop a daffy under the lift today and you’re considered either a hipster or a loser. It’s a shame because the daffy is one of skiing’s marquee stunts – one that, unlike, say, a cork 540, still is within the grasp of The Everyman Skier.
Its place in the annals of aerials is hallowed, with cameos in everything from “Hot Dog … the Movie” to “Hot Tub Time Machine” and infinite Warren Miller reels. Credit this to its difficulty compared with its more mundane cousins of yesteryear, the twister and spread eagle.
The daffy was how you earned your true stripes on the slopes. It takes guts – and big air – to mock gravity with your tips and tails like that and then get them back underfoot in time to touch down. Lose it on a twister? Who cares? So you land a little sideways. Screw up a daffy and you’re exposing your family jewels to the mountain’s whim. Of all upright aerials, the daffy places you in the worst crash position imaginable, which is both its bane and its beauty.
“It was definitely the marquee move of its day,” says former freestyle competitor, coach and longtime Steamboat local Park Smalley. “The spread eagle was the easiest, and the daffy came next … but there was always the fear factor of catching that tip.”
In typical one-upsmanship, people couldn’t get enough of a good thing and soon began linking the signature move. Smalley says aerialist Chris “Fuzz” Feddersen once linked five of them together, each one extending past the 180-degree, groin-pulling split mark. “Fuzz had the best daffies of anyone,” says local Olympian Nelson Carmichael, who won the bronze in the bumps at the 1992 Winter Games and used to sport a mean daffy himself. “Daffies were iconic because the good ones looked great from any angle. They felt great, too, seeing how far you could stretch, using your skis’ momentum to swing your feet.”
As for my own brush with the leg stretching, tip-catching badge of courage, my worst performance came on a simple double-daffy attempt on the back side of Lake Eldora. One stride, two strides, a cross and a bone-rattling crunch. It psyched me out for years, relegating me to lamer splitsters – a weak alternative with the splits, and tips, off to the side – for the duration of my daffy career.
You also could catch your tips on other things. Smalley remembers a Tequila Cup event in the ’70s when he hit a jump, threw a daffy and accidentally soared in his splits over the perimeter fence and out of the course. “It got high points,” he says.
Do it right, however, and it’s pure Picasso. Nowhere is this illustrated better than on a black-and-white poster hanging in my mom’s living room in Boulder, showing my other brother, Stephen, throwing a heroic daffy off a homemade kicker in Chautauqua Park, the Third Flatiron framed perfectly between his outstretched, Nadia Comaneci legs. For me, the younger brother still melting together my older brothers’ used P-Tex sticks, that represented skiing at its finest. He even added the words “Ski Boulder” below it, Lange-poster style (where you also want to “Keep those tips up”). The irony is that the move disappeared just as skis began getting shorter, which actually makes daffies easier than they were when we boosted them on tip-grabbing 205s.
So, to all you closet daffy-throwers out there now skiing on fatter, shorter skis, let’s resurrect this classic airborne spacewalk. Let’s raise our glasses and throw back a beer to raising our tails and throwing back our tips. Pick a catwalk, mogul or other lip, throw one foot forward and the other back, and moonwalk Mount Werner, unleashing a move that for too long has been nudged backstage by mute grabs, corks and rodeos. Think globally, daffy locally.
Two Other Freestyle Tricks We’d Still Like to See
Sure, those corks, backies, misties, and mute grabs are cool and all, but how about a throwback to two other aerial acrobatics from yesteryear? Way before the today’s era of off-axis rotations, jumpers kept it north-south, letting their skis do the talking. A few we’d like to see:
Twister: This is one of the only tricks that parlays onto the après dancefloor as well. As its name implies, the “twister” simply involves catching a little air and then “twisting” your skis to one side or the other and then back again real quick to land. Since your skis are moving sideways, you don’t need much air and the ensuing biff if you don’t get them back in time isn’t that bad. Feeling gutsy? Catch a little more air and do a double, twisting to both sides. Then you can twist and shout.
Spread eagle: This is the classic crowd pleaser. Find a lip, launch off and spread your legs wide in the air. Just make sure to get them back underneath you in time or you’re in for a groin pull. Do it right, however, and you can expect a raucous roar from those on the chairlift above. Extra credit: Throw both poles in between your legs to make it a Cossack.
