From my memory, they actually discovered that bug during development and decided that it actually improved gameplay, so they made it a feature before it was released.

And sadly, they never got it quite right! none of the subsequent tribes games had the same skiing behaviour. The only reason the competitive community in Tribes 2 has hung on for so long is that a community mod sped the game up to be more like Tribes 1.

Forget about Tribes: Vengeance & Tribes Ascend, neither captured that same feel.