Cross-country and Alpine Ski Poles
Poles are used in cross-country skiing to enable the user to gain more speed than by using the skis alone, as well as offering improved balance. In Nordic racing, poling technique is essential, especially so during a mass start in which double-poling is the main means of propulsion.
Alpine skiers use poles as well. While they serve the same purposes as they do in cross country, they can also help with the timing of the more advanced ski turns. By making contact with the ground between each turn in a process known as "pole planting", alpine skiers are given greater stability as they move their mass down the hill, creating more acceleration and a tighter turning radius.
Read more about this topic: Ski Pole
Famous quotes containing the words alpine, ski and/or poles:
“I held a bayonet
that was for the earth of your stomach.
The belly button singing its puzzle.
The intestines winding like the alpine roads.
It was made to enter you
as you have entered me....”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“The goal for all blind skiers is more freedom. You don’t have to see where you’re going, as long as you go. In skiing, you ski with your legs and not with your eyes. In life, you experience things with your mind and your body. And if you’re lacking one of the five senses, you adapt.”
—Lorita Bertraun, Blind American skier. As quoted in WomenSports magazine, p. 29 (January 1976)
“I see you boys of summer in your ruin.
Man in his maggot’s barren.
And boys are full and foreign in the pouch.
I am the man your father was.
We are the sons of flint and pitch.
O see the poles are kissing as they cross.”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)