One of the winter Olympic events I had the chance to watch today was slopestyle skiing. The athletic ability of these Olympic skiers is remarkable, especially in this event. We have been discussing projectile motion in in my Sport Biomechanics class, and this event is a great example, in which the skier is the projectile. We have discussed how the distance a projectile will travel is primarily dependent on two things: the projectile's velocity at takeoff, and the angle at which the projectile leaves the ground. In addition to projecting themselves, these skiers also perform spins and other tricks (I'm not familiar with all the skiing terminology), and then they have to land and continue down the course.
During today's competition, Canadian skier Yuki Tsubota failed to land from one of her take-offs and suffered a bad injury.
You can watch the video here. It is difficult to tell exactly what happened to her, but it appears that she gets her base of support (her skis) down behind her center of mass, and this causes her to collapse, fall forward, and hit her head. They are saying she sustained a broken jaw, which is a bad injury, but after watching the video, it could have been much worse. The amount of body control these athletes must have to land from these long projections at such a high velocity and then continue down the course is amazing.
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