FINALLY, the moment that snowless-Zimbabwe has been waiting for has arrived.
Today, at 11:30am, Luke Steyn, the country’s only representative in the Sochi Winter Olympics in Russia, gets into the action when he takes part in the Men’s Giant Slalom 1 event at the Khutor Alpine Centre.
At 14:30hrs, he will take part in the Giant Slalom 2 event before he completes his debut on Saturday in two other events in the late afternoon and evening.
Now, these are Winter Olympics, and not the usual games that involve Zimbabwe’s favourite sport, football and far from the madness of Rufaro and Barbourfields stadiums.
There are no 11 players from each side here and some dubious match officials, but just one person and his equipment.
Steyn is ranked 2,962nd in slalom and 1,711th in giant slalom.
According to Wikipedia, Slalom and Giant Slalom make up the “main technical events” in alpine ski racing.
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This category separates them from the “speed events” of Super-G and Downhill.
A course is constructed by laying out a series of gates. Gates are formed by alternating pairs of red and blue poles.
The skier must pass between the two poles forming the gate. (Strictly speaking, the tips of both skis and the skier’s feet must pass between the poles.)
A course has 55 to 75 gates for men and 40 to 60 gates for women. The vertical drop for a men’s course is 180 to 220m (591 to 722ft) and slightly less for women.
For slalom the vertical offset between gates is around 9m and the horizontal offset around 2m, although these figures have changed in recent times because of significant technical developments in ski equipment (namely, increased sidecut) that have revolutionised the sport.
The gates are arranged in a variety of different configurations to challenge the competitor, including delay gates and vertical combinations known as hairpins and flushes.
A hairpin is a series of gates including two gates with one closing gate. A flush is a series of gates including three or more gates with one closing gate.
Because the offsets are relatively small in slalom, ski racers take a fairly direct line and often knock the poles out of the way as they pass, which is known as blocking. (The main blocking technique in modern slalom is cross-blocking, in which the skier takes such a tight line and angulates so strongly that he or she is able to block the gate with the outside hand.)
