With the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics underway, you may have seen skiers go down slopes covered in groomed bumps, otherwise known as moguls.
While moguls can be naturally formed by skiers and snowboarders making sharp turns down a slope, at the Olympic level, they are man-made to ensure any given course is fair and consistent for all competitors.
An Olympic mogul course is built to precise specifications. The course’s total length is 250 meters long, at a minimum. The course’s width is generally 20 meters, give or take five meters. The average slope angle is roughly 28 degrees; no section can exceed 37 degrees or fall below 20 degrees for more than 20 meters. The bottom of the slope features a gentle gradient to allow competitors to safely decelerate at the end of their run.
Each mogul is 250 meters long, and there’s a mogul every four meters, according to Italy’s Domenico Martinelli, who helped explain the construction of Olympic moguls in a recent video.
The key is finding a balance between helping skiers get into a regular rhythm, but still making the course challenging enough for the Games. “If the mogul course is very regular, it’s harder for the judges to see who really is the best,” said Martinelli.
So, how are moguls made, exactly?
To make the moguls, a snowcat machine—a specialized truck-sized vehicle that grooms snow—uses a blade to create the first snow mounds. In mogul construction, the blade pushes the snow back up the hill to create the first pile, then pushes another pile of snow to create the second, and third and so on at precise intervals, going down the hill in a straight line. The intervals can be accurately measured by a rope or ski markers.
Once the first lane of piles is finished, the snowcat then moves over to one side and restarts the process, making sure that the next lane of piles are staggered from the first to create a uniform grid pattern. Most of the snow used in the construction of moguls is artificial, per Martinelli.
Then, course workers take care of the rest, using shovels to mold and refine the mounds into consistent shapes. The snow is left for a while to harden, after which it’ll finally be ready for competition.
This website has a detailed step-by-step process with pictures showing how a normal ski slope turns into a mogul one.
And here’s a view from a skier’s perspective to show what they’re seeing as they descend a man-made mogul course:
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as How Olympic Moguls Are Made.
