Racing at Kings
Kings Ski Club (Kings) is a volunteer run dry slope racing club which organises team dual slalom races across the country. Over the course of a season our four regional leagues hold 4 race events each year between October and March. Kings races are in team dual slalom format, broken down into three categories:
Mixed, a team consisting of 5 skiers with a minimum of one male and one female racer,
Ladies skiing, each team made up of 4 female racers
Snowboard, 3 boarders with no further restrictions
Our team dual slalom (or duals for short) has two teams competing on parallel courses against each other, there’s no timing equipment here! Racers on each team run one after another, the first team in each matchup to successfully complete the course wins!
The two courses, red and blue, makes teams navigate around slalom gates down the slope, at the finish line a Kings Official will drop a flag or light when the racer crosses the line, indicating that the next racer should start. Once all 4 or 5 racers are down and the final flag is dropped, the race is over, and the official will indicate which team has one, and if any one has been disqualified.
Naturally Kings being a skiing and snowboarding race series, sometimes there will be falls, straddles, missed gates and false starts, and teams can be disqualified. Our race rules are set out in such a way that a disqualification is worse than a loss, so if a racer straddles or misses a gate but hasn’t crossed the finish line, that racer can hike back up to correctly complete the course! Disqualifications will lead to teams having a lower standing in their group, which will adversely affect their team’s progress during the course of that event. Challenges to an official’s decision about a race can be made, but can only immediately after that race has ended, not at prize giving hours later!
At each regional event our race categories are run as a separate mini-tournaments, but all follow the same structure:
Regional Rounds (4 of them)
All the teams at the event are placed into round robin groups based on their current league standing (also known as seedings - see: Northern, Midlands, Western and Southern) and will race against the other 2-4 other teams in their group.
Teams then get moved into another group stage, based off of the results from the first group stage, racing another 2-4 times. The results of these will place teams into their final races where they race off for 1st/2nd, 3rd/4th etc.
This is repeated for each category of racing (mixed, ladies, board). Once racing is done prize giving happens, every team gets at least something so make sure you stick around. Prizes are also given for best fancy dress (usually given to a university) and
Kings Finals
Teams accumulate points across the four rounds and the top teams will qualify for our final event of the year in late April/early May . This end of year national event takes place in Gloucester and sees snowsports clubs from all over turn up to find the fastest team in the country.
Getting involved
These details just scratch the surface of Kings events, but if you want more details have a look at the Kings Race Rules, check out the Joining page if you’re interested in getting involved, either as a racer or by Officiating if you’re interested in helping the club!