page_title: Slalom skiing
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Slalom skiing / History
caption_attribution_description: Nr. 10 Nathalie Eklund i NM i slalåm i Trysil 27. mars 2011. Foto: Ola Matsson
context_page_description: Slalom is an alpine skiing and alpine snowboarding discipline, involving skiing between poles or gates. These are spaced more closely than those in giant slalom, super giant slalom and downhill, necessitating quicker and shorter turns. Internationally, the sport is contested at the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships, and at the Olympic Winter Games.
  The term may also refer to waterskiing on one ski.
context_section_description: The term slalom comes from the Morgedal/Seljord (a Norwegian dialect) word "slalåm": "sla", meaning slightly inclining hillside, and "låm", meaning track after skis.  The inventors of modern skiing classified their trails according to their difficulty.  Slalåm was a trail used in Telemark by boys and girls not yet able to try themselves on the more challenging runs.  Ufsilåm was a trail with one obstacle (ufse) like a jump, a fence, a difficult turn, a gorge, a cliff (often more than 10 metres (33 ft) high) and more. Uvyrdslåm was a trail with several obstacles. A Norwegian military downhill competition in 1767 included racing downhill among trees "without falling or breaking skis". Sondre Norheim and other skiers from Telemark practiced uvyrdslåm or "disrespectful/reckless downhill" where they raced downhill in difficult and untested terrain (i.e., off piste). The 1866 "ski race" in Oslo was a combined cross-country, jumping and slalom competition. In the slalom participants were allowed use poles for braking and steering, and they were given points for style (appropriate skier posture). During the late 1800s Norwegian skiers participated in all branches (jumping, slalom, and cross-country) often with the same pair of skis. Slalom and variants of slalom were often referred to as hill races. Around 1900 hill races are abandoned in the Oslo championships at Huseby and Holmenkollen. Mathias Zdarsky's development of the Lilienfeld binding helped change hill races into a specialty of the Alps region.
  The rules for the modern slalom were developed by Arnold Lunn in 1922 for the British National Ski Championships, and adopted for alpine skiing at the 1936 Winter Olympics. Under these rules gates were marked by pairs of flags rather than single ones, were arranged so that the racers had to use a variety of turn lengths to negotiate them, and scoring was on the basis of time alone, rather than on both time and style.
caption: Nathalie Eklund skis slalom at Trysil, Norway in 2011
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