Using magnetic gates to track slalom skiers' performance

EPFL researchers can now measure a slalom skier's exact time at each gate all the way down the slope. Their system also calculates the skiers' speed and trajectory more accurately than GPS. Whether they're racing the slalom or giant slalom, skiers all face the same imperative: to round the gates as fast as possible. But when it comes to carefully analyzing their performance, existing technologies provide only limited information. This includes some split times along with video images - which have to be reviewed manually. Coaches have also tried GPS-based systems, which track the skiers' speed and trajectory, but they're not always that easy to use. Benedikt Fasel and the team at the Laboratory of Movement Analysis and Measurement (LMAM) have now come up with a way to closely track performance on each section of the slalom course by drawing on several different technologies.