"An electrifying sport for participants and spectators alike," trills the Canadian Ski Cross team web site.
Although it has existed as a sport for decades, Ski Cross makes its Olympic début at the 2010 Winter Olympics at Vancouver.
"You want crashes?" demanded sportswriter Alan Abrahamson in his Universalsports.com blog (2009/01/12). "You like a sport where the winner might well be the last one standing?"
Ski Cross may be the sport to watch in 2010.
What is Ski Cross?
Ski Cross is a Free Style Skiing event based on motocross and a cousin sport, Snowboard Cross. Heats of four skiers combine Freestyle and Alpine skills to travel down a rugged technical course with many features (hills, turns, jumps etc.) adapted from those used in a Snowboard Cross. The race requires skill, strength, and physical endurance because of the demands of the course.
About the Ski Cross Course
A Ski Cross Course needs to meet requirements specified by the FIS (Fédération Internationale de Ski) rules. There are men's and women's events and both use the same course. Athletes will have to challenge the course many times during the event.
The course is constructed of features such as traverses, flats, rolls. banks, moguls, and jumps of various heights and difficulties, all connected with turns.
- Length: 800 to 1200 m
- Vertical Drop: 150 to 250 m
- Turns: 50% of the course must be turns of varying size and speeds between the other features.
- Features: 25% of the course must be traverses, moguls, banks etc.
- Jumps: 25% of the course will be jumps 1 to 4 m high.
Why is Ski Cross Exciting?
The excitement comes from several sources:
- A massed start, where all skiers head down the course at once from a special starting gate
- The technical difficulty of the course (skiers spend about 25% of the time airborne)
- The fast speed involved (average 19m/s for men – 65 mph – and 14m/s for women)
- The danger of wipe-outs and collisions – competitors wear helmets and padded body armor under their racing colors to reduce the risk of injury
How Does Ski Cross Work?
A timed qualification run seeds skiers into different brackets (heats) of four each.
All four skiers head down the run at the same time. The two skiers who cross the finish line first – or the survivors – advance to the next round, while the two slower skiers are ranked based either on their time or the distance they made it through the course.
The heats work down into quarter-finals and semi-finals. In the end, a "Small Final" round decides fifth to eight place, while a "Big Final" round determines medal winners (first to fourth places).
Mayhem in 2010?
Competitors are not allowed to pull, push, hold, or block each other during those sections of the course where passing may occur. Deliberate interference means an automatic disqualification. That doesn't mean that crashes and wipe-outs won't happen.
“There’s more of an understanding among the athletes that we don’t want to kill each other,” 2002 U.S. Olympic skier Jake Fiala is quoted on Abrahamson's blog. “But you can get away with some things out there.”
And that will be part of the excitement of Ski Cross at the 2010 Games.
Read More About 2010 Ski Cross :
FIS (Fédération Internationale de Ski)
NOTE: comments that are spam, sales pitches, libelous, multiple postings, or that contain abusive language, URLs (links) or images will be deleted.
Thomas Alan Gray - Tom has been writing for over 30 years; curiosity leads him to dig into a wide variety of topics.
Join the Conversation