Freestyle skiing, snow acrobatics

【How much do you know about the Winter Olympics】

This column is written: "Rules" and "Highlights" are compiled by Yang Sa, a reporter of Guangming Daily, and Liu Jialin, a correspondent of Guangming Daily, from the official website of the International Olympic Committee and the "Winter Olympic Games Projects and Spectator Guide" (edited by Li Shuwang and Zhang Lei). "Historical Tales" was written by Cui Lequan, distinguished professor of Zhengzhou University.

Chinese athlete Zhang Kexin in the final of the freestyle skiing U-shaped venue at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics on February 20, 2018. Photo by Shi Jiamin/Guangming Pictures

■ Rules

Freestyle skiing is a snow competition that uses skis and ski poles as tools to freely descend along the slopes, completing a series of prescribed and optional actions in the air and snow, known as "snow acrobatics". Freestyle skiing determines individual scores based on the artistic effect and level of competition performed by the athletes, and it requires the athletes to have very good balance and air control.

Aerial technique is a competition in which you take off on a jumping platform with a snowboard and demonstrate aerial movements, similar to a vaulting horse competition in gymnastics. The playing field consists of a landslide, transition zone, platform area, jumping platform, landing slope and stop zone. The competition is held through two rounds of preliminaries, and the first 12 players are selected to enter the final, and the final is divided into three rounds. Players who finish 1-8 in Round 1 of the final advance to Round 2, while those who finish 1st to 4th in Round 2 advance to the final round of the third round. The referee scores according to the athlete's jump, aerial movement and landing, and the three parts are added up and multiplied by the difficulty coefficient as the final score.

The snow skill competition venue is mostly built on a steep slope, the slope is set up with dense snow bags, there are two jumping platforms along the track, and the athletes complete the race down the slope, and the slalom action, aerial action quality score and the score converted into the time to complete the race are added to the ranking, and the one with the most scores is ranked first.

■ Historical

Freestyle skiing is based on alpine skiing. At the end of the 19th century, the founder of Norwegian skiing, the famous polar explorer, oceanographer and political activist Nansen, in his book "Junior Instructions on Alpine Downhill Technology", once proposed to rate the number of rotations and the degree of beauty of athletes, reflecting that alpine skiing has been pregnant with the embryo of freestyle skiing from the day of its birth. In 1928, John Carlton, who had represented the United States in the Nordic biathlon of the 1st Winter Olympics, was the first to wear skis to complete a snowflip in front of the audience. Since then, some enthusiasts who are keen on exploring new moves in alpine skiing have experimented. In 1958, Swiss ski instructor Arte Fürell experimented with his ski jumping and turning techniques and showed his ski stunts in the United States. Subsequently, Fryurel had a large following, and freestyle skiing was further developed.

In the early 1960s, a modern high-strength ski began to appear, initially using plastic and later changing to metal plastic. This kind of ski has both high strength and good stability. The emergence and promotion of this type of new type of ski has opened up new ways for the popularization of freestyle skiing.

In 1988, the IOC Executive Committee decided to include freestyle skiing in the Winter Olympics. The current freestyle skiing events at the Winter Olympics include men's and women's individual aerial skills, snow skills, U-shaped track skills, slope obstacle course skills, obstacle chases, big jumps and aerial skills mixed groups. China officially started the freestyle ski aerial skills event in 1989, and in 2006 Chinese athlete Han Xiaopeng won the gold medal in the men's aerial skills event at the Turin Winter Olympics.

■Highlights

Freestyle skiing is a "high-risk, high-difficulty, high-skill" sport in all sports competitions, and is also known as extreme sports in snow and ice sports. Its danger is mainly manifested in the entire sports process by the venue, climate, equipment affected greatly, such as the smoothness of the snow surface when falling, the wind direction and wind speed when falling, which will affect the athlete's jumping speed and height. The height of the athlete after vacating is generally about 10 meters, and the action to be completed in the air is such as the horizontal axis rotation of the straight body in the air for 3 weeks, and then the flip for 5 weeks, during which if the wind direction is unstable, it will cause the incompleteness of the action and the unstable position of the body when landing. If the air movement is not in place or deformed, and the landing part of the body is not a foot, the danger is even greater. If a rollover occurs, two large skis can also become a fatal danger. Therefore, in order to engage in this sport, in addition to the high requirements of the venue conditions, it is also necessary to have professional technical guidance, athletes and coaches must also be bold and careful, and have an enterprising spirit.

Danger and excitement coexist. When the outstanding athletes of freestyle skiing complete difficult and dangerous actions at high speed or in the air, they usually receive cheers and applause from the audience, which also shows that freestyle skiing is very ornamental.

Academic guidance: Qiu Zhaoyi, professor of Beijing Sport University

Guangming Daily ( 2022-02-12 09 edition)

Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily