Why Mikaela Shiffrin Was Disqualified in Two Events – NBC Chicago

It’s been a tough Winter Olympics to date for Alpine snowboarding nice Mikaela Shiffrin. The 26-year-old American has twice executed one thing she rarely does in worldwide competitors: “ski out” of a race.

It’s a dreaded time period for elite ski racers, one that’s normally accompanied by the letters DNF – didn’t end – which means a skier failed to finish the course and register a sound run.

Making the gates

Alpine snowboarding programs are lined with brightly coloured markers, known as gates, which athletes should ski via as they navigate the slope. Within the downhill, super-G and big slalom disciplines, gates are marked by pairs of flags anchored to the snow by versatile plastic poles. Making contact with a flag is allowed, supplied that each a part of the skier’s physique and tools stays contained in the inner-most pole.

Slalom is a bit completely different. For starters, the gates are made up of single poles slightly than bigger flags. The poles, alternating in shade, point out numerous turns the skiers should carry out down the hill.

A typical false impression is that the colour of every pole signifies whether or not the skiers should go to the suitable or left of it. Whereas this would possibly typically seem like the case when watching a slalom competitors, the colour of every pole is just meant to let the skiers know which gate is up subsequent. It falls upon the athletes to be taught the correct mixture of turns outlined by the course, which occurs throughout set inspection intervals within the hours or days earlier than a race.

SEE MORE: Alpine Skiing 101: Competition format

What does it imply to ski out?

Merely put, snowboarding out means lacking a gate at any level throughout a ski race. The implications of doing so are instantaneous disqualification from the occasion even when it spans a number of runs, as slalom, big slalom and the mixed occasion do on the Winter Olympics.

Generally, particularly within the pace disciplines of downhill and super-G, ski outs occur when an athlete loses management and crashes off his or her skis. Shiffrin suffered a minor crash – and was unhurt – throughout her giant slalom run.

Nevertheless, skiers may also ski out even with out crashing in the event that they stray too far outdoors the racing line, as Shiffrin did two days later in the slalom.