SIA: speed is your friend

太極滑雪

Indeed, like WWI aces would say, “altitude is money in the bank, and speed is money in the pocket.” Alpine skiing, in essence, is like flying a powerless glider, trading altitude/elevation for speed, and vice versa. Sometimes we need an insight to break out the conventional wisdom. In their example, the turns are started out by travelling sideways from fall-line, then turn into fall-line, then traverse, so the turns are accelerating first toward fall-line, then after cross the fall-line decelerating. Not just that from acceleration to deceleration is a complicated maneuver, and it is, in fact, a brake! To ski like those WWI aces said, dive straight down (follow the fall-line), any turning out speed will be slower than the initial speed, so, it is much easier to manage, as it is only deceleration part of the turn. Down-weighting to turn, speed is your friend.