People actually do this?
February 25, 2010 9:00 AM
If you’re like me, you’ve been enjoying the Olympics since the opening ceremonies. You’ve been sharing in the successes and failures of Canada’s athletes, cheering at the TV, talking about different performances with anybody who will listen, getting extremely tired of the ‘talking car’ commercials and wondering if anybody wears more makeup than Michael Landsberg.
If you’re also like me, you are marvelling at how strange many of the sports are in the winter games. Unlike the summer games, which feature a complete program of sports as popular and common as track and field, soccer and swimming, the winter games is full of oddities that many people have never heard of, let alone actually tried. One classmate put it best when she said to me “I wouldn’t know where to go [to try luge] if I wanted to.”
Of course the Winter Olympics has ice hockey, which is very popular in many of the colder countries of the world, and is king in Canada. Snowboarding and skiing are popular recreational activities, and figure skating is, in spite of the controversy surrounding it, still enjoyed around the world. That being said, let’s examine some of the events that have people scratching their heads this February.
Curling. This is a game that’s on the rise. It’s a popular spectator sport, it’s easy for people of any age and fitness level to pick up and enjoy, and it comes with a corny, tongue in cheek social culture that makes it a great game for Canadians. To highlight this final aspect, I want to bring back to mind the slogan of the Canadian Men’s National Championship held here in Halifax a few years back, “The Nokia Briar, It’s a shore thing.” Continuing in that vein, the Olympic trials were called, the “Roar of the Rings.”
All of this being said, curling is just weird. It’s a sport that involves sliding a spinning rock down a sheet of ice, sweeping the ice with a broom and alternately hollering the words ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ ‘hurry’ and ‘whoa.’ When you add in the fact that at the recreational level, drinking before, during and after the game is not only permitted, but encouraged, the entire affair makes a lot more sense.
Sliding Sports: Luge, Skeleton and Bobsled. I can understand bobsled... sort of. You get a team of people sprinting with a hollowed out torpedo, jumping in it and then hoping they don’t flip over.
Every child likes tobogganing and every child likes waterslides, so why not freeze over a waterslide and have adults race each other down it at 150 kilometres per hour. That sounds like a safe, accessible and economical activity. Oh wait... no.
Luge makes about as much sense as bobsled. You already have the track so you might as well go down it lying on a sled with no steering or breaks. As for two man luge, there is only one explanation: I guess they were doing one man luge one day and people got tired of waiting so long for their turns, so they decided to double up. Skeleton is just a natural progression from luge. There is always that show off who wants to go head first.
Nordic Combined/Ski Jumping. While we are on the topic of show offs, how did anybody ever come up with the idea of ski jumping. Competitors sit at the top of the big ramp and then slide down it and try to fly as far as they can. There is no word on whether competitors typically leave a note before they take the plunge.
This is an interesting sport because there is no women’s event in the winter Olympics. Inexplicably, women are trying to get this changed, when they should probably be thankful that they have an excuse for not participating in such a crazy activity.
Nordic combined has competitors do a ski jump and then has the survivors compete in a cross country ski race. Cross country skiing is an excellent way to improve cardiovascular endurance while saving your knees. That’s where the ski jump comes in.
Short Track Speed Skating. Short track, crowded space, lots of falls, sharp blades, sounds like a recipe for success. Where do I sign up?
The Winter Olympics is a popular sporting festival enjoyed by billions around the world. The joy of the Olympics is that it brings together people of different nationalities and cultures as they celebrate friendly competition and share in a collective “huh?”
