Biomechanical P ... Slalom Water Skiing R1.pdf - Atrium - University ...

4 DiscussionThere are several variables that impact the performance achieved during a slalom waterski run. To minimize the affect these variables would have on the results of this study: acontrolled testing environment was used, the results were normalized for bettercomparison between subjects and weather was monitored. It was underestimated theeffect of asking subjects to use equipment they had never skied on before and it was notpossible for them to ski at their normal peak ability. This is clear from Table 3 because itwas expected that all skiers would have a 100% success rate. Furthermore, therequirement that each subject ski two complete passes of the slalom course on each skiwas removed. Each subject still skied two lengths of the course and completed as manyturns as possible. This is why the turn totals are not all multiples of six. The ideal ski runwould consist of a deep water start with a low peak rope load followed by two completepasses of the slalom course with high peak skier velocities and low peak rope loads.The recorded wind speed and direction were relatively similar for all three of the testdays. However, it is important to recognize that because the subjects did not all ski on thesame day if one day affected performance significantly more than another day, it mightaffect the ability to compare between the skiers. For the subjects that skied over multipletest days there was no noticeable impact of the different skiing conditions on theirsuccess rate results. This indicates that there will be a negligible impact on the results ofthis study. The effect on the analysis between the skis will also be negligible because theskis were all used equally over the three test days.69