Competitive three-event tournament water skiing comprises three disciplines: trick, jump and slalom. In this article I fill you in on everything there is to know about tournament slalom water skiing.
The fundamentals
In tournament slalom water skiing, the tow boat is driven down the centre of a course of six turn buoys laid out in the water - three on either side of the boat path - which the competitor skis around in a zig-zag pattern.
At the end of each pass the boat stops for a moment, before towing the skier in the opposite direction down the course for the next pass attempt.
Each pass is made more difficult than the previous one. This is achieved by increasing the speed of the boat each pass, until the maximum speed is reached for the skier's class - after which the rope is made progressively shorter in predefined increments.
In this way, every tournament slalom ski competition is 'sudden death' in format. The skier continues at ever-faster boat speeds, followed by ever-shorter rope lengths, until they either miss a buoy or crash out in the attempt. At that point their run is over.
In normal competition circumstances the boat will not return to collect a fallen skier, leaving the poor competitor to make the ‘walk of shame’ back to the dock.
The skier scores one point for each buoy that they successfully get around, with the winner being the skier who clears the most buoys.
The tournament course
There are 26 buoys in a complete slalom water ski course. Some are there for the skier, and some for the boat driver.
As far as the skier is concerned, the most important buoys are the six turn buoys described above, but they also use a narrower pair at the beginning as an entry gate, and an identical pair at the other end being the exit gate.
The skier aims to ski through the entry gate (i.e. between the narrow gate buoys), ski around all six buoys, and finish by skiing through the exit gate.
A tournament course also includes pairs of pre-gate buoys in front of the entry gates, which the skier will use as a waypoint or timing marker to initiate their pull-out to the side of the boat, in preparation for skiing back through the entry gates.
The remainder of the course is made up of pairs of boat guide buoys, which are used to ensure a straight and true boat path, and which can be used to visually confirm the boat speed by timing the different sections.
Slalom course layout (not to scale)
The length of the course from gate to gate is 259 metres, with the pre-gate buoys positioned a further 55 metres out on either end of the course.
The six turn buoys are positioned 11.5 metres out from the centreline of the course, while the entry and exit gate buoys are 2.5 metres apart, only slightly wider than the boat guide buoys.
The straight-line skiing distance from the middle of the entry gates, directly to each of the six turn buoys, then to the middle of the exit gates, is 282 metres.
Boat speed
The tournament boat speed begins at a minimum set by the event organisers on the day, and increases in 3km/h increments each pass, until the maximum speed for the skier’s classification is reached. The maximum speed for men’s competition is 58 km/h, while for women’s competition the maximum is 55 km/h.
Skiers may elect to waive all of the qualifying passes below a certain boat speed, which in effect means that the competing skier can nominate their preferred starting speed. High level competitive skiers begin their passes with the boat already travelling at the maximum speed; they are only concerned with which rope length to start on.
At the maximum tournament boat speed of 58 km/h, a skier will traverse the 259m length of the course from entry gates to exit gates in a fraction over 16 seconds.
That's fast!
Of course, the skier has actually travelled at least 282 metres in this timeframe, because they have zig-zagged to the turn buoys. In reality they would have travelled quite a bit further even than that, because they are skiing in curved paths around the outside of those buoys.
As a result, the top speed of a competitive skier in the course will be more than double the average boat speed. This means that as they cross the boat wake on the way to the next buoy, they’re travelling across the water at over 100km/h.
Rope lengths
Tournament slalom ski ropes are made up in multiple removable sections which can be added and removed from the boat end of the rope, thus altering its overall length. Each section is coloured, providing a visual indication of the overall rope length represented by that particular shortening.
Slalom tournament rope lengths and colours run like this:
| Total Length (metres) | Loop Colour | Length (feet) | Feet off |
| 23.00 | Neutral | 75 | 0 |
| 18.25 | Red | 60 | 15 |
| 16.00 | Orange | 53 | 22 |
| 14.25 | Yellow | 47 | 28 |
| 13.00 | Green | 43 | 32 |
| 12.00 | Blue | 40 | 35 |
| 11.25 | Violet | 37 | 38 |
| 10.75 | Neutral | 35.5 | 39.5 |
| 10.25 | Pink | 34 | 41 |
| 9.75 | Black | 32 | 43 |
| 9.50 | Red | 31 | 44 |
In the table above, I’ve started with the longest tow rope length of 23 metres. However, in practice that rope length is not seen in competition, where the starting rope length is normally 18.25 metres.
The right-hand column labelled 'Feet off' is older language, which I've included because many people still refer to rope shortenings in this way. See the “Scoring and Terminology” section below for an explanation of this term, as well as some others that you are likely to encounter.
Grab a free quick-reference card for the boat!
If your boat doesn't have automated cruise control (or even if it does!), you can confirm that your boat speeds are accurate by timing your passes. A perfect 58 km/h pass, for example, is exactly 16.08 seconds from the entry gates to the exit gates. In competition the acceptable tolerance is 16.12 seconds on the slow side, down to 16.04 seconds on the fast side.
I've created a handy reference card for you to download, print out, and keep in the boat. It shows one table for boat speeds and another for rope lengths and colors. They're identical in size so you can cut them out and laminate them back-to-back. Keep it in the boat along with a stopwatch.
Click the image to download yours!
As with the starting boat speed, skiers may elect to waive all passes prior to a certain rope length. This effectively means that the competing skier can nominate their preferred starting rope length, and then shorten it for each subsequent pass as per the table above. Note that if the skier is starting at a shorter rope length than 18.25, then by definition the boat speed will already be set to the highest speed for that skier’s classification.
Here’s something to think about: recall that the turn buoys are set 11.5 metres from the centreline of the tournament course. This means that if you were to connect an 11.25m towline to the boat's ski pole (pylon), and pull that rope directly perpendicular to the boat – straight out to the side – the rope handle would not reach the turn buoy.
Given that skiers in high level competition regularly ski into ten metre line lengths and even shorter, that feat is made all the more amazing once you know the geometry involved…
Scoring and Terminology
The general principle for scoring is quite simple: one point is scored for each buoy that the skier successfully gets around.
However, when describing slalom skiing results and scores, you will often hear people use phrases such as...
"one and a half at 35 off”
or
"3¼ @ 12 metres"
... and you might wonder what it all means.
Both of these phrases indicate that a certain number of buoys was successfully passed (the first part of the phrase), at a certain rope length (the second part of the phrase).
Confusingly, however, there are three different ways to express rope length, and the number of buoys won't always be a whole number!
Time for a brief explainer.
Scoring rope length
Let’s start with the second part of the phrase first: rope length. This reflects the towline length at which those buoys were cleared. In other words, the rope shortening that the skier got to, before falling or missing a buoy.
The modern (and metric) way to express the second part is simply to state the tow rope length in metres, e.g. "12 metres”.
But in days of yore, rope shortenings were named according to how many feet of ski rope had been removed from the full length of 75 feet. For example what is now called the 14.25m shortening, was previously referred to as '28 off'. The logic thread to follow goes like this: '28 off' means 28 feet has been taken off the full 75 feet, which equals 47 feet of rope still on, which roughly equates to 14.25m in the metric system.
That older-style language has persisted in the sport, so you will likely hear rope shortenings still referred to in this way.
Scoring the number of buoys
Now let's look at the first part of the phrase, which is simply the number of buoys that were successfully cleared on the skier’s final pass.
Straightforward enough, but how do halves and quarters come about?
The reality is that a skier can fall at any point along the tournament course, so the scoring needs to accommodate those almost-but-not-quite situations.
A skier will score a quarter of a point if they successfully get outside and in front of the turn buoy, but then lose control or crash before their ski gets inside the turn buoy again.
This is easier to see in the diagram below, which is taken from the International Waterski & Wakeboard (IWWF) Federation Tournament Water Ski Rules handbook.
Point scoring
A skier will score half a point for a buoy if they successfully ski around it, but then lose control or fall before reaching the boat wake again (strictly speaking, the line of boat guide buoys).
To score the full point for the buoy, the skier needs to be in control of their ski when they return to the boat wake (again, technically the line of the boat guide buoys).
Scoring the boat speed
Notice that boat speed is not referred to at all in these examples. This implies that the maximum speed was in effect. Boat speed becomes irrelevant as the competition level increases, since all high-level competitors will be skiing at the maximum speed. It's only the rope shortenings that separate them.
If the skier's final successful pass was performed at less than maximum speed, then the rope length can be assumed to be the maximum, and the boat speed will be stated instead, like "Two @ 53km/h".
This means that the skier rounded two balls on the long line (18.25m) at the 53 km/h boat speed increment, before crashing or otherwise missing the third buoy.
Current world records
Now that you’re up to speed (pun intended) on the ins and outs of tournament slalom skiing (pun also intended! I’ll stop it now), I thought I would leave you with the current IWWF world water ski slalom standings:
Open Men’s
Nate Smith (USA), 2½ @ 9.75m (43 off).
Set in September 2013 at the Ski Ranch Fall Record 1 tournament in Covington, Louisiana.
Open Women’s
Regina Jaquess (USA), 5 @ 10.25m (41 off).
Set in 2023 at the Malibu Open tournament in Lymanland in Tuscaloosa, Alabama (pending as at 25 September 2023).
That’s a perfect pass!
There you have it - everything you every wanted to know about tournament slalom skiing but were too afraid to ask.
Please leave your thoughts in the comment in the box below.
Your virtual water ski coach,
Todd
PS - Before you go, why not:
