The key aspects of modern alpine ski racing technique and their relationship to performance (PhD)
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In the sport of alpine ski racing, margins between top racers on the world cup are often very small. In fact, races lasting over two minutes are often won by mere hundredths of a second. Perhaps what makes such tight margins so amazing is that alpine ski racing is a sport in which a relatively large variety of factors influence performance.
Turning technique is certainly one of the primary factors affecting performance as can easily be seen from the sheer number of publications addressing the topic. These studies, however, are often descriptive in nature and stop short of examining the relationship between technique and performance. In fact, despite a large volume of technique literature, there is a scarcity of research specifically addressing technique in terms of velocity - which is the one, and only, goal in competition. The purpose of this investigation, therefore, will be to identify and study key aspects of turning technique that are thought to have a profound affect on performance. Due to the complex nature of the selected problem, a research design integrating both qualitative and quantitative methods has been chosen.
The purpose of the qualitative component is to establish a basis for selecting interesting research questions. This phase is partially completed and has consisted of extensive observation of the Norwegian national team in training and competition, as well as in-depth interviews with 17 expert coaches from 6 nations. The results of these studies will be used to build a theoretical model of the various factors of turning technique and their relationship to performance.
Following the qualitative component, studies using quantitative methods will be used to examine and test certain aspects of this theoretical model. Although the analysis of the qualitative component is still incomplete, a number of components of turning technique have already begun to emerge as being important for performance. In particular, there seems to be two general strategies of turning technique. The first involves using cleanly carved turns and thus a round, relatively long line. In contrast, the second strategy consists of skiing a more direct and shorter line. This requires the athlete to steer the skis through the turn initiation rather than carve, a technique that is considered by many coaches to be a negative factor for performance. The existence of these two strategies gives rise to a number of interesting questions for further investigation. In particular, we hope to quantify certain aspects of these two strategies and to examine how they relate to performance in the different terrain, snow, and course conditions common to competitions.