ESPN Freeskiing

Skiers all have their own way of doing things. Some take a careful approach, learning tricks on trampolines or water ramps and only bringing them to snow when the perfect opportunity arises. Others are a little more adventurous on snow and take a few hits along the way.

Tanner's style has always been to do everything perfectly, to his feet, all the time. During contest season, Tanner does his contest run the first time he drops into the pipe every day. He rarely is unable to finish it, even on the very first run of the day.

Tanner falls so seldom that many of his falls are over-dramatized. His third-run crash at Winter X 11, for instance, would have seemed a common occurrence to a lesser pipe skier. And it made no impact on the remainder of Tanner's 2007 season. But it still seemed "horrific" to the people watching. And why should it not? The worst part of most falls lies in how odd they are — the more bizarre a fall looks to the eye, the more damage the mind infers. And when you're as good as Tanner, every fall is an anomaly. Every fall seems horrible.

Some things are exactly what they seem. Tanner's May 15 crash in Steven's Pass, WA left him with both tibial plateaus broken, one of which will require surgical repair. On the bright side, MRIs earlier this week show that Tanner did not sustain any ligament damage to either knee. This greatly simplifies the necessary treatment procedures and significantly reduces Tanner's expected recovery time. Still, broken bones and pins and plates legitimately qualify as horrific.

Horrific? Yes. Life-altering? Probably not. Tanner shattered his ankles on Chad's Gap in 2005 which makes him a veteran when it comes to skeletal carpentry. And an X Games Superpipe 3-peat that began the year immediately after that first truly horrific crash showed that it'll take more than broken legs to slow the guy down. Just don't tell that to Jeff Gillooly. Tanner's agent says that, "[Tanner] is in really good spirits right now." And with his history of coming back from injuries, there's no reason not to be. This will probably just end up a convenient, albeit painful, way to force T's life to slow down just in time for him to go back to school and finish earning his high school diploma this summer. But hey, what do I know? I'm only a doctor.

Something to think about: this horrific crash happened on a first-hit speed check on a park jump. Similarly, Tanner's infamous 2005 gap crash happened because he left the takeoff traveling too slow to clear the gap. That said, it seems that although he lives on a plane above most other skiers in terms of skill and technique, Tanner is vulnerable to the same struggles as everybody else when it comes to the terrifying guesswork of hitting a jump for the first time. In other big jump oriented sports, participants use speedometers and mathematics (okay, friends who know math) to eliminate some of the guesswork. Skiing has reached a point where a 100-foot gap doesn't really sound that big. And the sport's biggest name could have avoided two major surgeries simply by getting the speed right. Maybe it's time we take a closer look at all that guesswork.

But hey, what do I know? I'm only a doctor.

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