Alpine Skiing - Equipment

Equipment

Alpine skiing evolved as a specialization on the general sport of skiing during the late 19th century. In this era before ski lifts, all skiing required some cross-country, some uphill climbing, and some downhill skiing. Equipment during this era was largely similar to modern cross-country gear - a normal leather boot was fastened to the ski at the toe, allowing the heel to rise off the ski to allow striding motions. During the 1930s, the Kandahar binding was introduced, which could be locked down at the heel for the downhill portions. The Kandahar remained in widespread use until the 1960s.

As more and more skiers took up the sport, especially in the 1950s, broken legs became all too common. Dr. Richard Spademan saw 150 spiral fractures pass through his emergency department near Squaw Valley in three days, an event that led to the development of the Spademan binding. By the early 1950s, several "safety bindings" were on the market that allowed the ski to come off when the ski twisted to the side. This helped reduce the incidence of spiral fractures, but the lack of standardization in measurements and the always-changing mechanical interface with leather boots make these less than foolproof.

In 1950, Howard Head introduced the Head Standard ski. This consisted of a conventional wooden ski sandwiched between two thin layers of aluminum. When the ski was rotated on-edge, the aluminum sheets prevented the wooden core from twisting longitudinally, and kept much more of the ski's edge firmly pressed into the snow. This so dramatically improved turning performance that it was referred to as "The Cheater", because it allowed even beginners to "cheat" their turns and look like pros. A further advance around 1960 replaced the metals with fibreglass, which improved the "springiness" of the skis and made them much more lively over bumps. The Dynamic VR-17 took this process to its modern conclusion in the late 1960s, when they introduced the torsion box design, which further improved longitudinal stiffness.

The evolution of torsional stiffness in skis allowed increasing control over the edging, and thus continued to improve the amount of carving relative to skidding through the turn. However, this evolution also demanded more of the skiers effort to be put into rotating the skis onto edge, as opposed to forcing them to rotate tip in or out. A true carving turn was not easy, because the lateral motion of the leg would not be transmitted to the ski through the ski boots of the era. These were generally cut low, just over the ankle, and soft laterally, both of which limited the amount of sideways rotating force that could be applied.

In the winter of 1965/66, two new ski boots made of plastic came to market. Compared to leather designs, the Rosemount and Lange boots dramatically increased the amount of lateral stiffness, and in turn, the amount of edging control over the ski. Additionally, the plastic did not change shape over time or when it got wet. This allowed the bindings to be much more closely matched to the fit of the boot, and offer dramatically improved performance. For the first time, safety bindings were no longer looser than cable bindings, and rapidly took over.

By the early 1970s, fibreglass torsion-box skis about 200 cm long, plastic boots rising halfway to the knee, and safety bindings of various construction were universal. Wooden skis, leather boots and cable bindings disappeared almost overnight, and were gone by 1972. Technique developed, but the sport remained little changed between this time and the 1980s. The only dramatic changes during this period were in form; the rear-entry ski boot was common during the 1980s but became unpopular and disappeared by the early 1990s, and Salomon's introduction of the monocoque ski design led to widespread use of the "cap ski", different only in that it was cheaper to produce.

By 1990, the sport was essentially the same as it was in 1975. Ski design was effectively at a dead end, and many changes in material or construction technique were largely for marketing. The introduction of snowboarding captured the imagination of a younger generation, to whom skiing appeared moribund. By the mid-1990s, many ski hills were dominated by boarders, and their ability to do stunts in terrain parks.

A major change took place after the introduction of the Elan SCX ski in the early 1990s. The SCX was the first widely available "parabolic" ski, which dramatically improved carving performance. It required no real changes in construction, only the designer's desire to experiment with more radical designs. By 1995, practically every ski produced had more or less "shaping", and for a time, carving became a sport onto its own.

A similar change followed with the "rocker" design, which bends the ski into a banana-like shape, as opposed to the classic bow-like shaping with the tips and tails pressed down and the center raised. Today, almost all skis include both of these design notes, further improving the ability of the ski to be smoothly carved in a wider variety of conditions and terrain. The introduction of twin-tip ("park") skis allowed them into the terrain parks, where they are now common.