Slalom skiing
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Slalom (from Norwegian slalåm: "sla," meaning steep hillside, and "låm," meaning track after skis.) is an alpine skiing discipline. It involves skiing between poles (gates) spaced much closer together than in Giant Slalom, Super-G or Downhill, thereby causing quicker and shorter turns. It is regarded as the most technically challenging of the alpine ski disciplines.
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[edit] Definition
Slalom and Giant Slalom make up the "technical events" in alpine ski racing. This category separates them from the "speed events" like Super-G and Downhill.
A course is constructed by laying out a series of gates. Gates are formed by alternating pairs of red and blue poles. The skier must pass between the two poles forming the gate. (Strictly speaking, the tips of both skis and the skier's feet must pass between the poles.) A course has 55 to 75 gates for men and 40 to 60 gates for women.
For slalom the vertical offset between gates is around 9 meters (30 feet) and the horizontal offset around 2 meters (6.5 feet), although these figures have changed in recent times because of significant technical developments in ski equipment (namely, increased sidecut) which have revolutionized the sport. The gates are arranged in a variety of different configurations to challenge the competitor, including delay gates and vertical combinations known as hairpins and flushes. The worldwide governing body, FIS (Federation Internationale de Ski) has a set of regulations detailing what configurations are allowed or mandated for an official course.
Because the offsets are relatively small in slalom, skiers take a fairly direct line and often knock the poles out of the way as they pass, which is known as blocking. (The main blocking technique in modern slalom is cross-blocking, in which the skier takes such a tight line and angulates so strongly that he or she is able to block the gate with the outside hand.) In modern slalom, a variety of protective equipment is used such as shin pads, hand guards, helmets and face guards.
[edit] History
The rules for the modern slalom were developed by Sir Arnold Lunn in 1922 for the British National Ski Championships, tried by the FIS in 1928, and adopted for the 1936 Winter Olympics. Under his rules, the gates were marked by pairs of flags rather than single ones, were arranged so that the racers had to use a variety of turn lengths to negotiate them, and scoring was on the basis of time alone, not time and style.
[edit] Innovation and Rule Changes
In the early 1980s, bamboo poles were replaced by hard plastic hinged poles known as "rapid gates" or "breakaway gates." The new gates allowed skiers to take a much more direct path down a slalom course through the process of "cross-blocking" or "as shinning" the gates. The rigid nature of bamboo gates had forced skiers to maneuver their entire body around each gate, while the hinged gates require only that the skis and boots of the skier (as the FIS rules state) go around each gate, with the body passing through or on the inside of the pole. In the early 1990s, flags were removed completely from slalom gates in international competition.
[edit] Equipment
With the innovation of "shaped" (or parabolic) skis around the turn of the century, equipment used for slalom in international competition changed drastically. World Cup skiers commonly skied on slalom skis at a length of 203-207 centimeters in the 1980s and 1990s but by the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, the majority of competitors were using skis measuring 160 cm or less.
The downside of the shorter skis was that athletes found that recoveries were more difficult with a smaller platform underfoot. Over concern for the safety of athletes, the FIS began to set minimum ski lengths for international slalom competition. The minimum was initially set at 155 cm for men and 150 cm for women, but was increased to 165 cm for men and 155 cm for women for the 2003-2004 season.
American Bode Miller hastened the shift to the shorter, more radical sidecut skis when he achieved unexpected success after becoming the first Junior Olympic athlete to adopt the equipment in giant slalom and super G in 1996. A few years later, the technology was adapted to slalom skis as well.
