Alpine skiing

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Alpine skiing (or downhill skiing) is a recreational activity and sport involving sliding down snow-covered hills with long, thin skis attached to each foot.

Alpine skiing evolved from cross-country skiing when ski lift infrastructure was developed at mountain resorts to tow skiers back to the top of slopes, thus making it possible to repeatedly enjoy skiing down steep, long slopes that would be otherwise too tiring to climb up. The sport is popular wherever the combination of snow, mountain slopes, and a sufficient tourist infrastructure can be built up, including parts of Europe, North America, East Asia (mainly South Korea and Japan, Australia and New Zealand, and the South America Andes.

The main technical challenges faced by skiers are simply how to control the direction and speed of their descent. Typically, novice skiers use a technique called the "snowplough" to turn and stop by pointing one or both skis inward, but more advanced skiers use more difficult but more elegant and speedier methods. Modern advanced skiing technique is dominated by "carving." To carve, a skier rolls his or her knees from side to side while keeping the upper body and hips facing down the hill, so that only the knees and feet are turned. This method of turning allows modern skis to turn without skidding or slowing down, creating a smooth arc.

As skiers gain confidence, they may tackle steeper, longer and more uneven slopes at higher speeds. In North America the easiest slopes are marked by green circles, and are typically fairly flat and smooth. Sometimes known as bunny hills, they are usually groomed by specially equipped snowcats every night. A blue square marks slopes of medium difficulty; they are steeper than green circles and may be left in a natural state rather than machine-groomed. A black diamond slope is steeper than a blue square and often involves challenging terrain such as moguls, double fall lines, or gladed sections. A double black diamond is for experts only; these trails are steep, rarely groomed and often left in a completely natural state. There is no standard for these designations, however, and each ski resort determines them relative to their own terrain difficulty. So, for instance, a blue-square (mid-level) trail at one ski mountain may be markedly more difficult than a black-diamond (expert) trail at another mountain. In Europe the system is based on colour alone, with the level of difficulty increasing from blue to red to black.

Competitions

Various alpine skiing competitions have developed in the history of skiing. Broadly speaking, competitive skiing is broken up into two disciplines: racing and freestyle.

Racing involves making fast turns around gates in an attempt to attain the fastest overall time down one or two runs of a race course. Elite competitive skiers participate in the annual World Cup series, as well as the Olympic Games and the World Championships. Slalom, giant slalom (GS), super giant slalom (super-G), and downhill are the four racing disciplines, with downhill being the fastest event and slalom being the most technical. There is also a "combined" event that includes one downhill run and two slalom runs on a single day. In 2005, the FIS (Fédération Internationale de Ski) introduced a new event to the World Cup calendar called the super combined (or super combi), consisting of one shortened downhill run and just one slalom run. That year, the FIS also introduced an alpine team racing event at the World Championships in Bormio, Italy.

Freestyle skiing incorporates events such as Moguls, aerials, and sometimes "new-school" events such as halfpipe, big air, slopestyle, and skiercross. Together with extreme skiing, new-school freestyle skiing is also sometimes known as freeskiing. Until relatively recently, freestyle competitions also included an event called ballet, later renamed "acro-ski."

In addition to racing and freestyle, other types of alpine skiing competitions exist. One discipline administered by the FIS but not usually considered part of racing is speed skiing, in which competitors strive to achieve the highest total speed in a straight line, with no gates or turns. Numerous non-FIS competitions have emerged over the years. More traditional events include 'gelandesprung'' jumping, and "powder 8" contests; among the more recent introductions are "big mountain" or "extreme skiing" contests, in which athletes start at the top of a mountain and ski a route down that involves wide, fast turns as well as cliff drops. The competitors are judged on the technical difficulty of their routes and any tricks they perform on the way down the hill.

Alpine skiing

Competitions

See also