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:
“Reason now gazes above the realm of the dark but warm feelings as the Alpine peaks do above the clouds. They behold the sun more clearly and distinctly, but they are cold and unfruitful.”
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)
“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)
“War and culture, those are the two poles of Europe, her heaven and hell, her glory and shame, and they cannot be separated from one another. When one comes to an end, the other will end also and one cannot end without the other. The fact that no war has broken out in Europe for fifty years is connected in some mysterious way with the fact that for fifty years no new Picasso has appeared either.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)