Perhaps because the local (European) public that buys skis, actually prefers to go really slow? This might be different from the rest of the world.

A skis that rides high and closes easily, might that ask for some very exact skier weight tuning perhaps? I fall in the 70-100kg category, which doesn't give me much confidence in the shops having to sell them to me. And if I go into a foreign shop, the one pair of big skis they have always seems to be "Perfekt für Ihnen, mein Herr".