Aerial Freestyle Skiing - It’s a Sport too, you know
Well, I said that I thought it was and interesting “sport” to watch (see previous post), and promised to do a little research to figure out what the heck’s going on. Thankfully, I didn’t have to go far .. as my favorite Olympic site .. CBC, has animated instructions explaining how the sport works .. just click on ‘Related Information’, then select ‘Sport Explainer’.
SHORT Version
* In the Men’s freestyle “Aerial” skiing qualifications earlier today, 28 skiiers took two jumps and the best 12 skiiers with the highest score will compete in the final on Wednesday.
* Out of these 28 skiiers, only 2 of the 4 Canadians qualified to be in the final
* Here is the final results of the qualification round found HERE
Rank / NOC / Skiier / Combined Score
1 - CHN - Xiaopeng Han (250.45)
2 - BLR - Dmitri Dashinski (249.34)
3 - CAN - Warren Shouldice (243.45)
Other Canadian Athletes
7 - CAN - Kyle Nissen (231.64 - qualified)
19 - CAN - Jeff Bean (198.49 - didn’t qualify)
20 - CAN - Steve Omischl (198.23 - didn’t qualify)
* The rest of the 12 qualifying men skiiers are here which will be on February 23, 2006.
* The Ladies qualifications are tomorrow and from all of the athletes competing, the final 12 will compete on February 22, 2006 in the finals
* Go Canada Go!
Long Version
* Aerials is a subset of Freestyle Skiing competition (moguls being another)
* Skiiers ski off an edge of a ramp then execute an aerial manoeuvre of his/her choice
* Each skiier gets two jumps, the best 12 finalists from qualification round perform two more jumps, with a clean scoring slate
Here’s today’s top 3 scores (right click open in a new window)
* There are 7 judges - 5 mark the takeoff (20% of the mark) and execution (50% of the mark). There are 2 other judges who mark the landing (30% of the mark).
* Of the 5 takeoff/execution judges, the hi and the low is eliminated and remaining 3 scores are combined
* Of the 2 landing judges, the scores are averaged and then multiplied by 3
* The skiiers have option to select an aerial jumb, and a difficulty factor is attributed. This factor is multiplied by the score for a jump score (I don’t know where they determine these factor numbers from)
* The two jump scores are combined for a Final Score.
>> Get it?
E.G> Looking at 3rd Spot - Canada
Jump 1 - 5 scores - 6.4,6.6,6.7,6.6,6.5 / drop highest 6.7 and lowest 6.4 >> 6.6+6.6+6.5=19.70
Jump 2 - 2 scores 2.7+2.7 >> =5.4 /2 =2.7 times 3 = 8.1
Combine = 19.70 + 8.1 = 27.8
Jump selected “bFdFF” (Back/full-double full-full)? which is worth “DD” difficulty points of 4.425 x 27.8 =123.015 (truncated 123.01)
* Got it? Repeat for second jump - and you get 120.44 …
* 123.01 + 120.44 = 243.45 = 3rd place.
* There are two groups of jumps … Forward jumps, and Backward jumps with perilious spins and twists (see here for more) and uh … umm ..
* You know.. just forget it and watch the durn event!
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POSTED IN: Freestyle Skiing
1 opinion for Aerial Freestyle Skiing - It’s a Sport too, you know
A B Frederick
Dec 1, 2006 at 1:32 am
Where can one obtain records of aerial freestyle skiing (National, World Cup, World Championships, Olympics)?
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