I was shaken up when I heard Shane McConkey was dead. I wasn’t expecting the knot in my stomach. I wasn’t expecting my first thoughts to be of his young daughter. I had never known him outside of a chance encounter and didn’t expect to be emotionally affected on that level. As the news started to spread, I received the same shaken reactions from skiers who had never met him. I wondered why before realizing that, as skiers we are all connected to Shane, and the debt we owe him cannot be understated. I’m not here to write his obituary, but to give him more than a simple R.I.P. by acknowledging the personal debt I owe him for revolutionizing my life.
It is indisputable that Shane did more to revolutionize ski design than anyone in the history of the sport. Every time I step into a pair of skis, every time I go skiing, every time I have the best day of my life, it’s a direct result of Shane’s impact on how skis are built.
I’m not going to lie to you and tell you Shane was my childhood hero because he wasn’t. I’m too young, and the skiers I consider heroes were the ones that looked up to him. But to me Shane and his relentless positivity always embodied what skiing should be. Fun. Fresh. Exciting. He lived skiing, and skiing lived through him.
What I admire most in Shane is that he was the absolute best at being himself. He lived life doing what he loved, he was the best he could be at it, and it was just a coincidence that his best was better than almost anyone else. People who are the best at something while being themselves are almost always doing something that has never been done before. They are the people that change everything. Freeskiing has lost some great humans, but none who have contributed as much to the sport as Shane did, and it will be impossible to forget him.
March 30, 2009 at 1:26 pm |
Ya, feeling it. The irony is I am too old: Shane came after my childhood heroes (Plake & Schmidt). That said, I had the chance to run into him a few times in the old Whistler scene… even though he was a Tahoe/Squaw dude by then. He will be missed, I think, because he pushed it far — wingsuit BASE ski-jumping — and also was plain intelligent, well-spoken, and all-around standup guy. You can design skis without brains. He was about the skill, not the style of yr pants — something many riders could learn from today.
March 30, 2009 at 1:27 pm |
You CAN’T design skis without brains: that should read.
March 30, 2009 at 9:23 pm |
Unlikely brethren. John should make that his epitaph or something.
April 5, 2009 at 3:59 pm |
A legend whether be a rock star, explorer or skier is still a legend. We as humans revel in people who push the boundaries of everyday life. Living vicariously is as substantial in adult hood as day dreaming and playing superman when you’re five years old.
So lets celebrate Shane’s life. Lets ski and ski as hard as we did when we first slid down a hill. Lets lose as much sleep as we can before a pow day due to shear excitement and lets smile because we had someone like Shane to watch and get stoked.
He will always be young, strong and timeless in my eyes.
What a gift we were given.
-Pavel
April 5, 2009 at 9:11 pm |
“He will always be young, strong and timeless in my eyes.”
Unfortunately, I don’t think we were given the chance to look at him in any other way. Word though.