We are all used to seeing race photos.  Usually they depict high drama, such as a full-on gate-crush.  

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Or perhaps they show a very dynamic scramble at high edge angles.   

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Crushes and scrambles are the images racers usually want to see.  

But there is more to racing than just high drama, high edge angles, railroad tracking, and gate crushing.  The in-betweens matter too.  The in-betweens are the transitions, the essential - and sometimes calmer - connectors that stitch the dramatic parts together.  

The Oxford English Dictionary's first definition for "transition" is "The action or process of passing or passage from one condition, action, or (occas.) place, to another; change . . . ."   A race coach could have written that definition.  A transition In racing is the "action or process" of going from one condition - say, a left-footed turn - to another - a right-footed turn. A lot goes on during this passage; the racer effectively passes through neutral in going from one dynamic turn to another.  Certainly the racer passes from one "place to another," moving from the place one turn ends to the place the next begins.  And there are a lot of transitions in a race: usually there will be some form of transition between every gate.

Thus, transitions are the in-betweens and the critical connectors.  And on camera, they seem almost leisurely and not very dramatic, at least in comparision to multi-G turns and heavy impacts between bodies and gates.    But that doesn't mean they are neither interesting nor important.   And the whole notion of going from the relative security and stability of highly edged and carving skis at 30-50 mph to a flat platform on sharpened and beveled edges that threaten to catch requires some suspension of belief in the laws of physics.  And a lot of trust.

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