Winter Olympics

Personally, I have a love/hate relationship with the Winter Olympics, for one focal reason; curling. I have the utmost respect for the curlers, no matter which country they represent, as I realise they spend a large portion of their lives working to be the best curling team, and to make it to such prestigious events like the Olympics. The actual sport, however, is by far one of the most boring disciplines I’ve come across. That is, of course, my opinion, and I am amazed by people who can sit through the entire 10 ends without changing channel at some point.

I’m sitting here typing, taking sips from my mug of tea, watching the USA vs Canada Ice Hockey Semi-final. There’s less than 2 minutes to go until the end of the match and Canada are one up on USA, which makes me happy. Not because I am prejudiced against America in any way shape or form, but because I have decided I am going to support Canada in the Winter Games a) because they always do way better than Britain and b) because I have Canadian family so it’s not entirely unwarranted.

(Canada just won the match, yay.)

I think my favourite winter sports are the Ski and Border cross, and the sliding events; bobsleigh, luge and skeleton.

The ski and border cross events are two of the few events involving actual races; many of them events rely on time trials or a score board to appoint rankings and positions, which I don’t think is as exciting and suspenseful. With the cross races, there’s struggles and danger and the occasional concussion. Canada also took gold and silver in the women’s ski cross this morning; added bonus. The ski races go quicker, but I think I prefer watching the board races. The skiers seem to get into more accidents, because they often get their ski’s tangled up in one another, or land badly on the tail ends. The board races are cleaner, but there’s still the danger of taking a turn wrong, or getting in the way of one of your opponents. In this morning, several of the races had casualties that had to stretchered off the course. The commentators had named the orange cushion thing The Blood Wagon, but I refuse to call it that. It sounds way too sinister for a luminous orange inflatable cushion.

The sliding events I like just because of the talent and fearlessness involved. With the luge and skeleton, the athletes go down the chute at 100km/h on little more than a tea tray, fractionally shifting their body weights to steer. In the bobsleigh, one ill steer and they tip onto their sides and scrape their helmets on the ice.

All the winter games are incredible to watch (bar curling, but we all have our own opinion), be it freestyle skiing, going up a vertical wall of snow and somersaulting in the air, to cross country, skiing for upwards of 1 hour, to short track speed skating. I wish I was brave enough or motivated enough to try one of the many admirable sports, but unfortunately, I’m too comfortable sat here with Internet and television.