- Related Topics:
- skiing
- Alpine skiing
- supergiant slalom
- giant slalom
- Notable Honorees:
- Marc Girardelli
- Alberto Tomba
slalom
What is slalom skiing?
What are the different types of slalom skiing?
What is the course layout for slalom skiing?
slalom, ski race that follows a winding course between gates (pairs of poles, sometimes topped with flags), testing an athlete’s skill in making deft turns at speed. Slalom is one of the Alpine skiing events, so called because they originated in the Alps of Europe.
History, organization, and inclusion in Olympic Games
The modern slalom race was devised by British sportsman Arnold Lunn in the early 1920s. (Although in 1905 Austrian Matthias Zdarsky had developed a “testing run,” an 85-gate slalom, this had little effect and no influence on modern slalom racing.) It is governed by the Fédération Internationale de Ski et de Snowboard (FIS; International Ski and Snowboard Federation), which held the first world championship in slalom in 1931. The sport was added to the Olympic Winter program in the 1936 Games held at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.
Courses, events, and rules
The course is carefully designed to test the skill, timing, and judgment of competitors. The gates are placed in varying combinations, and it demands great skill to achieve the best line of approach and exit with the different combinations. A skier who misses a gate is disqualified. When first developed, slalom gates were small flags stuck in the snow; they were replaced by longer bamboo canes, which could snap back and hit competitors. To solve this problem, plastic poles were devised that have springs that enable them to tilt and return to their original position without breaking when the skiers make contact with them. The poles around which skiers must turn must be between 6 and 13 meters (20 and 43 feet) apart.
For Olympic, world championship, and World Cup events, the men’s slalom course must have a vertical descent of 180 to 220 meters (590 to 722 feet) and the women’s must have a drop of 140 to 220 meters (460 to 722 feet); for other events and less-skilled contestants, the course may be shorter and less difficult. Men’s events use about 55 to 75 gates, and women’s use about 42 to 75. In top international events, slalom competitors usually take two runs without practice on two different courses. The winner is the one with the lowest combined time.
The giant slalom has characteristics of both the slalom and the downhill, the latter a longer, faster race. Giant slalom gates are wider and set farther apart, and the course is longer than in the slalom. The event was first included in the world championships in 1950 and in the Olympics in 1952. The supergiant slalom, or super-G, race is primarily a speed event, with many of the features of downhill skiing. The course is steeper and straighter than the other slalom events and features longer, more sweeping turns taken at a higher speed. Just as in downhill, the winner is decided in a single run. The super-G was included in the world championships in 1987 and in the Olympics in 1988.
Notable athletes
Competitive slalom racing has mostly been dominated by athletes from the Alpine countries of Europe, though there have been many standouts from the United States.
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