Speed skiing is a sport where the purpose is to be able to go down a hill as quick as possible in an attempt to make it to the bottom of the hill in the least amount of time. It is believed to have originated in the year 1898 when a skier allegedly went skiing and reached a speed of 139 km/h. Recordings of speed skiing began in the year 1932 even thought the sport had existed for many years before, and it became an official Olympic sport in 1992.
In speed skiing in order to be successful you must focus on two key aspects of the sport. One of those aspects is to reduce friction. The equipment is very important in reducing friction, the skis used in speed skiing have the largest area in which the ski is touching the snow. This actually helps reduce friction by distributing the weight more evenly, This would cause a problem though, if the skis were unstable and did not stay in contact with the snow, manufacturers avoid this by making skis very rigid, and are on average 25 pounds.
Another way skiers reduce friction is through air resistance, as you can tell skiers wear very aerodynamic suits. The suits are skin tight and coated in polyurethane, this coating gives the suit a density which will not allow low pressure zones to form on the skier, distributing the air resistance, and maximizing speed. Another aspect of the suit is the spring in the bottom the boot the skier wears. This spring puts the person into a forward position, and helps them be more aerodynamic because they are having less wind hit them than if they were in an upright position.
When an object is aerodynamic, it maximizes efficiency as far as movement goes. With skiing this is done through the materials and equipment they use which allows air to flow by with minimal resistance and friction. The equipment and positioning of the skier is shown to be very effective in this website's experiment as made evident in the raw data part of the website.
The other aspect of speed skiing is harnessing the force of gravity, gravity is a downward force the earth exerts on us, it is based on the mass of the skier. If the skier is heavier they will generate more speed than someone who has a lower mass, although they also tend to have a larger surface area that comes into contact with the wind, causing them to be slower. The ideal skier would have a combination of mass and a small size to avoid the wind resistance
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