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They are separated by vertical drop and gate spacing, which together determine speed. Slalom is the tightest, with 55 to 75 gates over 180 to 220 metres of drop for men and turns roughly every second. Giant slalom has about a third as many turns over a longer course, with wider offsets and speeds of 60 to 80 km/h. Super-G spaces gates at least 25 metres apart over 400 to 650 metres of drop and offers no training runs at all. Downhill has 800 to 1,100 metres of drop, gates used mainly to control speed, and top speeds beyond 140 km/h. Slalom and giant slalom are decided over two runs; super-G and downhill over one.

Sustained speeds of 100 to 130 km/h are routine on a World Cup downhill, with peaks above 140 km/h on the fastest sections. The highest speed ever measured in a race was 161.9 km/h, recorded by France's Johan Clarey on the Haneggschuss at Wengen in 2013. Those numbers are achieved on skis at least 218 centimetres long with a minimum 50-metre sidecut radius, which makes them extremely stable at speed and almost unturnable below it. The physics are unforgiving: air resistance rises with the square of speed, which is why the tuck position and race-suit aerodynamics matter more than anything happening at the ski above about 80 km/h.

Because it is faster. Until the early 1980s slalom poles were rigid, usually bamboo, and racers had to ski around them, which forced a wider line. Hinged breakaway poles changed that: a racer can now take the shortest possible line straight through the gate and simply knock the pole flat with a shin, forearm or shoulder. The technique is called blocking, and cross-blocking — clearing the pole with the inside arm — allows a tighter line still. This is why slalom racers wear shin guards, forearm guards, pole guards and a chin bar on the helmet: over a 60-gate course they take dozens of impacts at around 40 km/h.

Every World Cup race awards points to the top 30 finishers on a fixed scale: 100 for a win, then 80, 60, 50, 45, 40 and downward to 1 for 30th. The racer with the highest total across the whole season, in every discipline, wins the overall Crystal Globe — the sport's most prestigious season-long prize. Separate small globes go to the highest scorer in each individual discipline. Only the top 25 in each discipline qualify for the March World Cup finals, where points are awarded only to the top 15. Olympic and world championship results carry no World Cup points at all, which is why the honour rolls diverge so often.

Because the course changes as it is skied. In slalom, ruts form in the turning areas within a dozen runs, altering the effective line and destabilising later starters. In speed events, sun softens the snow and cloud flattens the light. The World Cup rules therefore let the leading racers on each discipline's start list draw among themselves for the earliest bibs, with everyone else following in ranking order. The one deliberate reversal is the flip-30 rule in second runs of technical events: the top 30 start in reverse order, so the first-run leader skis last on the worst snow. It is the sport's built-in equaliser and it overturns leads constantly.

They are disqualified, and the time is deleted from the results regardless of how fast the run was. Both ski tips and both feet must pass between the two poles of a gate; straddling — putting one ski on each side of a turning pole — counts as a miss. A racer who realises the error may climb back up and pass through the gate correctly, and the run then stands, though the lost seconds normally end any chance of a result. Video gate judges review marginal cases after the run. This is why coaches at the finish look for the flags before they look at the clock, and why a scoreboard sometimes shows DSQ beside a winning time.