I was recently asked where the term Christie, as in stem Christie, a technique in skiing for turning, where before turning to the fall line the uphill ski is stemmed outward, from parallel, after the fall line the ski returns to parallel, comes from.
The origins of the word go back to Norway; the turn was named after Kristiania, now called Oslo the capital of Norway, where the name Kristianiasving was used for parallel turns, to differentiate it from the Telemark turn, Telemark being another region of Norway.
The technique became widely popular after Johannes Schneider made it part of his Arlberg technique in 1910.
The term was very popular and used right up until the 1970s, and you may even hear the term used today but often now, we may just use the term Stem turn.
Robbie Loades, Sun Peaks
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