The purpose of the slalom discipline, which is held in two runs, is to travel in the shortest time possible a distance that requires the crossing of gates, in the ascending numerical order of the gates, trying to avoid touching the poles or the skipping of the gates themselves.
The gates are formed by a suspended pole. The downstream, in favor of the current, are indicated by 5 (five) green rings and from 5 (five) white rings, alternating between them. The upstream, against the current, are marked by 5 (five) red rings and 5 (five) white rings, alternating each other.
The number of gates along the slalom route must be of at least 8 (eight) and maximum of fourteen (14), of which a minimum number of 2 and a maximum of 6 must be upstream, evenly distributed on the right and left banks of the left of the river or channel.
To consider a regular door passage, the following conditions must occur:
a) all heads of all crew members have crossed the gate line on the correct direction, according to the design of the track, without touching any pole with the body, with the paddles or with the raft;
b) heads of all competitors crossed the line between riverside and pole in proper direction i.e. they must pass between the pole and the riverside and in the proper predetermined direction.
c) heads of all competitors must pass through the gate while all off the competitors are inside of the boat
d) in case of upstream gates team is performing continuous advancement through the gate.
Penalty
In a slalom race are the following penalties assigned:
"5" points-seconds: when the passage of the gate is correct, but one or more crew members touch one or more times the pole of the gate. Repeated touches of the same pole are penalized only once.
"50" points-seconds:
when one or more crew members skip the gate and when one or more crew members intentionally push the pole to facilitate passage.
Ranking
The result is given by the time taken in seconds in the best between the two runs, adding the penalties assigned for respective runs. The penalty points, converted into seconds are added to the race time.
