I have always placed a great deal of emphasis on the gates, but perhaps not enough. No matter what you try to do in the course, if you have a bad gate, you make success a more difficult goal. Nine times out of ten when I am having trouble with my skiing, it can be traced back to the gate. Without getting into the details of a perfect gate (because I happen to think you can achieve it in several ways), here are a few principles you must stick to:
- Keep some speed so that you stay light on the line on your turn in to the gates. This will allow you to really carry your direction out after the second wake.
- Move early. All I mean when I say this is to begin your turn in before you think you should. This really relates back to the first tip in that it forces you to start carrying your speed toward the gates and ultimately across course before you lose it (speed that is). If you do this, you gain cross-course speed with less effort.
- Ride the ski in. Don’t move your upper body toward the gates without paying attention to where you are on the ski. You need to fall off the right edge of the ski (from the core) and carry your mass toward the gates all the way to and through the edge change. This means that you have to move not only across the course, but with the boat as well. This allows you to use the boat to generate speed rather than fighting the boat.
These simple concepts may allow you to accomplish a gate that is unique to your style, but efficient as well.