Slalom

Today at SnowKing I skied G.S. but I know the title says Slalom but I skied G.S.  Wall I was skiing the other course that was set up was slalom and it had some really good skiers there. Slalom is fast turns that aren't spread out across the hill as far and are shorter radius. Montana State University Ski Team, the Canadian Ski Team, the German Ski Team, and some of the Dartmouth Ski Team there as well. The German Ski Team was really good and had a skier with six points which is really good because it's like golf where you want the least amount of points you can possibly achieve. The guys name was Stefan Luitz, he's really good because the fastest guy in the world is the only person at zero so he has to be beat to have his zero points go up. Ted Ligety is the fastest guy in the world right now and currently has zero points. Stefan is so good that he had two pairs of skis for one run, he would wear his training gates skis and then go down the gate course and then he would have another guy come down with his skis and he would take off the skis that he wore for the course and then ski his free skiing trainer skis which were the exact same length as his training gates skis. Stefan also has another pair of skis just for race day and skis those only on race day, and he has all three pairs for all four events even though he really only does slalom. Stefan has a ski tuner which every professional ski racer has that will tune and wax and scrape and brush them every single day and a lot of the time they will do it multiple times a day, for race day or even for high intensity training days.

This Stefan Luitz skiing some G.S. courtesy of Weltcup

Points go down by beating skiers that have better points than you so they bring your points down so that you look faster and faster. Your points start at nine hundred ninety and go down from there and you can't go any hire than nine hundred ninety.

I thought it was really cool to be able to watch these really good skiers, even the ones that don't have only six points because they were all really fantastic skiers and I enjoyed and was intrigued watching them. I also really enjoy watching them ski because they all are fantastic skiers and in slalom it's really easy to point out the things that they do that makes them go so fast that you might also need to work on so they help you too see what is right and then your coaches help to feel how it is right.