Abstract

The International Ski Federation (FIS) implemented new ski regulation prior to the 2012/2013 season for men and women and for the men again prior to the 2017/2018 season in an effort to increase skiers’ safety in the Giant Slalom (GS) event in the Alpine World Cup (WC). At present, no study has investigated how these changes impacted total race times, gate-to-gate times or number of gates per race. Hence, the purpose of this study was to investigate how the regulation changes have affected these parameters. Data were collected from the official result lists, by the FIS, for the GS event during 15 WC seasons (2005/2006-2019/2020), for men and women, respectively and grouped into Rule 1 (2005/2006-2011/2012), Rule 2 (2012/2013-2016/2017) and Rule 3 (2017/2018-2019/2020). Differences (for total race time, gate-to-gate times and number of gates) between rules were analyzed using Mann-Whitney tests and Kruskal-Wallis rank sum tests for women and men, respectively. For male skiers, the race time during Rule 2 was 152.51 (138.72-157.55) s, which was significantly slower (p < 0.01) than Rule 1, 147.42 (143.13-154.26) s and to Rule 3, 149.37 (135.63-158.32) s (p<0.05). For women, race times during Rule 1 was significant slower (p<0.001, r=0.23, df =455, U=939852.5, z = 12.079) than Rule 2, 141.3 (132.71-148.78) s vs. 137.12 (125.05-146.78) s. The men’s gate-to-gate times increased for Rule 2 compared to Rule 3, 1.49 (1.45-1.55) s vs. 1.48 (1.45-1.52) s, p<0.05), whereas the women’s gate-to-gate times decreased for Rule 2 compared to Rule 1, 1.53 (1.48-1.57) s, vs 1.57 (1.52-1.62) s, p<0.001. Changing the ski equipment regulations affected men and women differently as well the course setting and should not be considered as the sole effort to reduce skiing speed and risk of injury in GS in the alpine WC.

Keywords: Alpine skiing; Sidecut; Ski radii; Injury prevention