Giant slalom

Giant slalom (GS) is an alpine skiing and alpine snowboarding discipline. It involves skiing between sets of poles (gates) spaced at a greater distance to each other than in slalom but less than in Super-G.

Giant slalom and slalom make up the technical events in alpine ski racing. This category separates them from the speed events of Super-G and downhill. The technical events are normally composed of two runs, held on different courses on the same ski run.

Course

The vertical drop for a GS course must be 250–450 metres for men, 250–400 m for women. The number of gates in this event is 56–70 for men and 46–58 for women. The number of direction changes in a GS course equals 11–15% of the vertical drop of the course in metres, 13–15% for children. As an example, on a 300 m (984 ft) vertical course, there would be between 33 and 45 direction changes for an adult race.

Speed

Although not the fastest event in skiing, on average a well trained racer may reach average speeds of 40 km/h (25 mi/h) in the slalom.