Alpine skiing - Torino 2006

EVENTS: Alpine skiing at the 2006 Winter Olympics will be held in the town of Sestriere, Italy from February 13 to February 24.

People began rudimental skiing as far back as 5,000 years ago. Probably Norwegians were the first , infact they used skis for hunting across snow-covered terrain. From Norway, skiing reached Scandinavia and Russia as a winter way of transport and eventually as a sport like cross-country skiing. Alpine skiing evolved from cross-country skiing. The first alpine skiing competition, a primitive downhill, was held in the 1850s in Oslo. After then,the sport spread to the rest of Europe and to the USA, where miners skiing competitions were held as an entertainment during the winter.

Modern alpine sking was invented by Sir Arnold Lunn from Britain and Austrian Hannes Schneider,. Lunn promoted the first slalom in 1922 in Muerren, Switzerland, and with Schneider, two years later, he organized the race that became the first Olympic alpine event. The Arlberg-Kandahar, a combined slalom and downhill event, is today considered as the first alpine event, the beginning of alpine's inclusion in the Olympic games.

Moreover, giant slalom and slalom skiing events were official Paralympic sports since the inaugural Paralympic Winter Games of 1976 in Ornskoldsvik, Sweden. Various alpine skiing competitions have developed in the history of skiing, and elite competitive skiers participate in the annual World Cup series, as well as the Winter Olympic Games.

Competitive skiing is generally broken up into two disciplines: Freestyle and Racing. Racing involves making fast turns around gates in an attempt to get the fastest overall time down a course and presently includes the 4 racing disciplines called Slalom, GS, Super-G, and Downhill.