Introduction:
I have writen this text due to my own experience I have made when I bought my own carving skis. I got a lot of information from professional people I asked. The following text is a rather short summery and a short explanation about this new sport for people which don`t know much about it. It contains mainly basic information.

Carving is one of the new hits of the winter of 1999. It belongs to the undergroup of skiing. The number of carver is still increasing every year, because learning how to carve is very easy and the drive feeling is really great.

What exactly is carving?
Carving is a new young and dynamic sport which nearly everybod can do, who can drive ski a little bit.The only thing you need is a pair of carving skis. The difference between a normal pair of skis and the special carving skis is that the carving skis are a little bit shorter and have more sidecut. This first facilates driving curves and enabels to lay in when you are driving them, so that you can feel the famous centrifugal force -  feeling. That`s also the reason why people are so fascinated by this new sport.

Where is carving coming from?
The carving ski for everybody has been developed out of the material that the professionals runers have. Professional runers naturaly have to be very fast. This is only  possible when they don`t slide a lot during the curves, because this is slowing down. So specialists have developed a ski which isn`t sliding during the curves but is cutting. So they have developed the race carver. Later people thougt, that this type of ski also could be sold to normal people and this was the birth of the carving sport for everybody. Later the material was always ameliorated and also today specialist are searching for new techniques to get the carvin ski always better.

There are 3 different types of carving.
You can split up the carvers in 3 maingroups. The first type of carver is the socalled funcarver. His or her skis are rather short, so that he can drive where he wants to. He also can go off the pists when the snow is good and it isn`t to dangerous. The 2nd type of carver is the extremcarver. His skis are very short and have an extrem cut. This enables a short radius what really makes you feel the famous centrifugal force - feeling, which every carver is dreaming of. And finally the 3rd type of carver is the race carver. This often are people who are also driving competition or even championships. Their skis are rather long for a carving ski. This enables a very good control of your material and in consequence of that a higher speed, which you need when you are driving runs.

But one thing is staying the same in all three kinds of carving: The famous centrifugal force - feeling.

Here follow some pictures which show the difference between a normal and a carving ski and some explanations to the pictures.