Help with autofocus and freeski

[tbar23]

My son is a free skier - think big air type stuff. This weekend I had the opportunity to shoot a few minutes of air bag practice with his team using my EOS R7 and RF100-500.
It is very difficult to find a position where you can spot the skier from beginning to end - typically, you can see them approach the jump, then they disappear behind the jump, then you catch them as they launch off the jump.
I was trying to use a wide aperture, fast shutter speed and low ISO.
I also had the auto-focus set to look for People with priority switch set to 1.
About half the time, the focus was on the athlete and half the time it was on the spectacular foliage behind them.
I only had about 15 minutes to work on the shots, so very little time to experiment.

I’m thinking that I might want to set priority switch to 2, but I’m not sure how much that will help.
I also thought about trying to manual focus ahead of time, but that will limit my ability to get the full trick.

Any advice on how to improve my ability to focus and track an athlete that you can’t see until the moment they appear?

I uploaded one good one and one bad one to give you an idea of what I’m trying to do.

And to preempt a few questions, here are my AF settings:
Servo mode and point AF. Subject tracking was set to OFF, but I think that is simply the frame showing subject tracking.
Subject to track set to People with Eye Detection on. As mentioned, Switched tracked subjects set to 1.
Case 4 with tracking sensitivity set to -1 and accelerate/decel tracking set to +2.

Both photos are f/5.0, 1/1000 shutter speed. First is ISO640 while second is 400.

 

[tbar23]

Maybe I’ll ask a specific question - does anyone know if the AF area (e.g. Spot, 1-point, Expand Area, etc.) has an impact on subject tracking? Will the AF algo attempt to start using the AF area?
I have the camera setup for back-button focusing so that I can use manual spot AF in addition to subject tracking. I’m wondering if I should change the AF area to something larger to help lock onto the skier as they appear from behind the jump.
I also did a bit more reading of the manual and think that Case 2 or 3 subject tracking is probably better for my application than the Case 4 that I’m currently using.

 

[Normware]

I would not use Case 4. Use Case 3

just from the picon (bikes) it is for fast moving sports (not cars/boats motorcycles) . I would also not worry about eye tracking for freeski. Most of the time you won't see the eyes (Goggles, hats hoods helmets) due to the nature of the sport (twisting upside down). As long as the skier is in focus, who cares about tracking the eyes (but thats just me having shot alpine events with film and no autofocus what so ever.

 

[tbar23]

Thanks @Normware - I was thinking the same thing regarding eye tracking. Probably makes sense to turn off.