The history of skiing and snowboarding.

This section is a history of skiing and snowboarding: the oldest skis and carvings, Norway's part in turning skiing into a sport, the Alpine pioneers and ski schools, the founding of FIS, alpine skiing's road to the Olympics, lifts, the 10th Mountain Division, the snowboard, freestyle and the halfpipe, the history of safety equipment and codes, and women's events discipline by discipline. It is history only. Nothing in it teaches how to ski or ride, and how the sport is organised and governed today is in Learn.

How these pages are written

• No single date for the first skis. Prehistoric finds and carvings are dated only as the encyclopedia, museum or historian that studied them dates them, and every version is given.
• Disagreements are shown, not settled by us. Where sources give different dates or claims, the pages say so and name who says what. Where one source is clearly the body's own record, as with FIS's congress page for its founding, the pages say which version they follow and why.
• Gaps are admitted. Facts that rest on one uncited entry, a search summary we could not check, or Wikipedia alone are labelled as such. The IOC's website could not be opened during the research, so several Olympic details rest on other sources and are marked.
• Names of turns and methods, never how they are done. The Telemark, the Christiania and the Arlberg technique appear with the dates the sources give, but no page describes how to do them.
• Deaths only as published. Figures, such as the 10th Mountain Division's casualties, are given in total as the publishing body gives them, and no private individual is named.
• Places named for history only. Resorts and hills appear only where a museum, historian, government body or newspaper names them for a historical event. Nothing here recommends a resort, school or maker.

The pages in this section

1. The oldest skis: ski finds from Sweden, Norway, Finland and Russia, the rock carvings and the Altai claim, each dated by its own source.
2. Norway and Sondre Norheim: the 1868 Christiania race, the Telemark and Christiania names, Huseby and Holmenkollen.
3. The Alps and the ski schools: Zdarsky, Schneider, the first slalom claims and the instructor associations.
4. FIS and Chamonix 1924: the 1910 commission, the founding of FIS, the first Winter Games and the national federations.
5. Alpine skiing and the Olympics: the 1930 Oslo decision, Garmisch 1936 and the ski-teacher boycott, St Moritz 1948 and Sapporo 1972.
6. Ski lifts: the 1908 tow, the rope tows of the 1930s, the Davos T-bar and the Sun Valley chairlift.
7. The 10th Mountain Division: the ski troops, Camp Hale and the Italian campaign.
8. Snowboarding begins: Sims's 1963 board, Poppen's Snurfer, Winterstick and Burton.
9. Snowboarding joins the mountain: the first contests, the ISF and FIS, and Nagano 1998.
10. Freestyle and halfpipe: hot-dog skiing, FIS recognition in 1979 and the first halfpipes.
11. Safety history: release bindings, ski brakes, helmets, the codes of conduct and trail signs.
12. Women in skiing: the first races and the first Olympic events, discipline by discipline.
13. Timeline: every main date in one place, with its source.

Related reading

FIS and the national bodies as they are today are on FIS and the governing bodies and national federations. Current safety rules and research are in Safety, and terms are explained in the glossary.