INTRODUCTION: In World Cup Skicross, athletes compete in heats of four to advance through a cup system to the big final, where the winner of the competition is crowned. The courses include terrain obstacles such as jumps, rollers, dragon backs, and turns of various types. The obstacles are built to challenge the technical, tactical, and physical abilities of the athletes, and to separate them from each other and to create a competition that is exciting to ski and exciting to watch. For the sport to be attractive to the athletes and spectators, the races should allow athletes to fight for their position throughout the course and change their ranking several times on their way from start to finish [1]. Therefore, course designers need to understand and build courses that provoke and allow athletes to frequently overtake each other. To gain quantitative knowledge on how course characteristics create opportunities for rank shifts between athletes within a heat, this study examined the relationship between course characteristics and rank shifts in Men and Women World Cup Skicross. METHODS: In the 2023/24 season, five World Cup races (Innichen, Alleghe, St. Moritz, Reiteralm, Veysonnaz) for women and men were analysed for the issue of rank shift. The geometric characteristics of the World Cup courses were captured using differential GNSS to create digital terrain models, from which the type and location of the obstacles were derived. Human raters used TV footage of all final heats for men (from 8th finals) and women (from 4th finals) to assess the location and time of rank shifts between athletes. A rank shift was counted when the skis of one or more athletes skiing in the same position moved away from each other so that they no longer overlapped. Human raters also identified events where athletes were out of balance. The out of balance events were used in the analysis as a measure of how challenging an obstacle was for the athletes. Athletes from one nation carried a standalone GNSS to measure position and time and to calculate continuous speed. Chi-square tests were used to compare the number of rank shifts between the five events, between women and men, and between course sections (courses were divided into 4-5 sections based on the logic of course design by the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) race directors). RESULTS/DISCUSSION: The number of rank shifts differed between women and men for sections as well as whole races. Men had significantly more rank shifts than women. The number of rank shifts also differed between races for both women and men. Most rank shifts occurred on the start straight section for both women and men. Speed and out of balance events affected rank shifts for both sexes. CONCLUSION: Courses need to be designed to produce sufficient rank shifts, particularly for women, to be attractive for athletes and spectators. This study found that course difficulty and speed are the key aspects to achieving a higher number of rank shifts.
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