SSC Racing About Ski Racing
Ski racing is an individual sport where competitors complete a course, one-at-a-time, aiming to get correctly from the top to the bottom as quickly as possible. It is a timed competition and there are no judges, style points, or penalties – you simply have to correctly complete the course from top to bottom as quickly as possible.
There are four alpine racing disciplines: slalom (SL), giant slalom, (GS), super-g (‘super giant slalom’, SG), and downhill (DH). In slalom, gates are around 10m apart, so not much slope space is required, meaning we can run SL races in Scotland. In GS, gates are around 25m apart, so more slope space is needed and we can occasionally do this when conditions are good. At children’s level (15 and younger), SG races are possible within the British racing system, but only at races held abroad. DH is generally not raced below international level (16+).
At an international level, ski racing is governed by the International Ski Federation (FIS: fis-ski.com). At a British level, GB Snowsport (gbsnowsport.com) works with the “Home Nations Governing Bodies” (HNGBs), which for us is Snowsport Scotland (snowsportscotland.org) to manage the sport. In the UK, we follow the rules of ski racing set by FIS, with our own systems and amendments in place.
Ski races are competed for in age and gender categories. The age categories are defined by year of birth, not current age, and change at the start of May each year ahead of the summer season of dryslope & indoor racing. Age category bounds can be found at https://gbski.com/lists.php#ages (make sure you are reading the correct season!). U10 and U12 age categories are referred to as ‘minis’ and race SL in shorter ‘stubby’ gates which require less experience and training to navigate – at this age it is much more about enjoyment than competitiveness! U14 and U16 categories are the ‘children’s’ categories, with U18+ considered adult categories.
All race information is centralised in one location, GBSki (gbski.com). GBSki is managed by a group of people from GBSnowsport and the HNGBs. This group also manage the “seeding systems” where all U14+ registered racers can score ‘seed points’ and be placed in the national ranking system. You can read about that here. There is a carefully considered calendar of British races produced each year, with different clubs and organisations running races at different venues throughout the year. There are lots of ‘unseeded’ events, however a lot of these races are seeded and become a part of the ‘circuit’ of races widely attended by the most committed racers. Minis races often run alongside seeded events but are always unseeded. During the winter, a few of these races happen in Scotland (when we can run them), but most of them happen in the Alps.
