Classic vs. Skating: kick timing and the "stopped" question

I see that people distinguish classic from skating in that they say
the "foot has to stop" in classic. Well, that's true, but is it such a
huge deal? The POLE also has to stop! In both classic and skating.

In classic you simply stop the ski ALONG with stopping the pole.

Then you kick as you pole.

It's not really any harder to stop one than it is to stop both.

You "hit" the pole plant and you "hit" the foot-plant and it works.

The difference is, I suppose, that in skating you can start kicking in
a variety of places during the poling phase. Well, you can do that in
classic, too! But people will say that if you kick wrongly in classic
that you'll slip and miss your kick. Well, in skating if you kick with
bad timing you'll bog down and get ye olde toilet seat. But I guess
you'll still be moving.

An interesting point to me is that the timing of the kick/poling in
both classic and skating has to be done with total body weight
transfer in both techniques, for racing anyway. You can delay the kick
but you better know what you're doing and keep standing up tall, for
instance. A delayed kick doesn't HAVE to mean toilet-seat. ---It might
just mean a Hang V1 or a transition to V2 or V2A or changing in and
among all the "gears."

Anyway, it seems odd to me that the "stopped foot" is emphasized as if
it's part of the essential "slowness" of classic. ...The pole stops,
too. Is it slow?

Sure, you push on the pole. But you push on your stopped foot, too.

I'm not sure that I like how some folks tend to say that classic is
harder or slower or a lot different from skating. I recall the
Norwegian tapes first impressing me due to them using all the same
ideas to teach all the moves for classic and skating, including h-
bone.

The thing about skating is that you're adding 2 force vectors as you
kick for propulsion off of a gliding ski, or some such thing, while in
classic you're using only 1 vector. But the 2 vectors in skating are
in turn diluted because the ski isn't moving straight down the trail,
thus skating ends up only 10% faster.

I wonder how that time difference really works out when leg action is
involved. It seems like it would be uphills where the speed difference
of the two modes would be most relevant, as regards the "stopped foot"
anyway. Is there a point where interesting science comes in as regards
the steepness of a hill versus classic and V1?

I recall winning a freestyle citizen race that had a long steep uphill
and a tricky downhill. I chose to do classic because I could still get
good glide on the uphill---didn't need to h-bone. I was faster
classicking than the V1ers were skating. It was the long uphill
leaving the shooting range at the Snow Mt. YMCA ski area. That was
fun.

--JP