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Journalism of Courage
Punishing on the knees and rewarding for an athlete who is flexible, slalom and giant slalom are two Winter Olympic skiing sports that require successfully completing an obstacle course in the least possible time.
India’s Arif Khan has qualified for both events and has stated that a finish in the Top-30 would be an achievement. Arif’s giant slalom event starts early on Sunday (February 13)
While Arif is not the first Indian to take part in the Winter Olympics, he is the only athlete from the country to be a part of the 2022 Beijing Games. He is also the only Indian skier to have ever qualified for both events together.
Alpine skiing is a type of ski sport that is made up of five different events — the downhill, Super G, Alpine combined, slalom and giant slalom. Various iterations of the sport have existed in history — be it the 1767 Norwegian military competition that involved skiing downhill with trees as obstacles or the evolution to ‘hill races’ in the late 1800s where skiers would take part in cross-country, slalom, and other events with the same skis.
The modern-day iteration of slalom skiing was ratified in 1922 by Arnold Lunn for the British National Ski Championships. Fourteen years later, these changes were brought into the 1936 Winter Olympics in Germany.
A cascading slope of snow is fixed with highly flexible red and blue plastic poles (gates) across a fixed course. The course has anywhere between 55-75 gates for men and 40-60 for women. The height from top to bottom of the course is usually between 180-220 m for men.
Skiers are supposed to start at the top of the hill and in the shortest time, navigate their way between the poles to reach the finish line. In both events, the skier has a chance to put up a time that enters them in the Top 30 and post this, gets another chance to put up a winning time.
Arif has said previously that he’s looking to break into the Top 30 but his best position till date at a World Championship has been 45th.
“I have been training over a couple of years seriously and my expectation is to be in the world’s top 30. To be in the top 30 is like medal winners in the world,” he had said before leaving for Beijing.
While slalom is the shorter of the two events, it is the more technically challenging one since the gates are smaller and skiers have to focus on their zigzagging technique rather than their speed in this event.
Usually that technique is dependent on tension. Core muscles need to remain tense while the skier flies downhill. The best slalom skiers in the world have a tendency to show extreme discipline with their arms — the lesser the movement, the more one’s body can be streamlined to zigzag through the course.
Giant slalom on the other hand combines the technical aspect of slalom with the speed of downhill skiing events. The giant slalom event sees skiers reach up to 80 kilometres an hour. The increase in speed means that the ‘gates’ have to be larger.
In slalom skiing, turns are much shorter, and therefore, skiers get a narrower and direct line to race on. The average slalom skier is much closer to the gates and thus uses their body to push gates out of the way while keeping their line of racing as close to a straight line as possible. This method is called cross blocking.
In giant slalom, this technique gets marginalised slightly. This is because gates are wider apart and are fewer than in slalom, which is why the event is usually the faster of the two. The average skier therefore uses their shoulder to round up the gate, rather than the outside of their poles.
The Yanqing district in Beijing is holding the slalom and giant slalom events. Located 90 km north of Beijing, the Yanqing National Alpine Ski Centre is holding all alpine events of the 2022 Winter Games.
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