BEIJING 2022: Meet The Sports
Well folks it is HAPPENING the Olympics are HERE and lest you be caught questioning what curling is or wondering what the f*ck a monobob entails. we are here to guide you through all the different ways one can slide on snow and ice. You’ll notice there are a lot less sports in the winter and that’s because it’s freakin cold out there and that actually limits the human capability to be creative & invent outdoor activities. We jest! But actually, I mean, there is only so much you can do when we live in a world of snow & ice. For our west coast readers (all 4 of you) who are not living in a world of snow and ice currently, well considering how unsustainable the winter olympics are becoming in the face of climate change, you’re just ahead of the curve. Enough doomsday thinking, more sliding down snowing hills!!!!!
Skiing …Down Hills (or not)!
This is the marquee sport of the winter games folks. It might not be why we’re all here (some of us lack the coordination to ski okay!) and it might not even be why the USA is here (traditionally we get WHOOPED in cross country) but like it or not, the majority of the Winter Games consists of some sort of activity on skis. Within that BROAD net there is a lot of variation, so let’s start with the OG’s: Alpine Skiing & Cross Country Skiing (expect to see the teams from the Alps be very good here and the scandanavians). Alpine Skiing events are: Slalom (the one with the flags), Downhill (it’s exactly what it sounds like, it’s a need 4 speed) Super G (sort of a cross between the 2, with the flags closer together, and you only get 1 run), Combined (lil bit of it all), and Giant Slalom, in both men’s & women’s. Then there is a mixed team event as well. In Cross Country Skiing, it’s less downhill (actually it’s not any downhill sorry guys), it’s a LOT of thigh muscle (truly they COLLAPSE at the finish of these races) and it’s very much long distance. It’s been at every single winter games since 1924, so we are stuck with it. This is like the Track events of the winter Olympics: there’s going to be a million of them, many of them very long, few of them very interesting. I hate to say it but it’s the truth! The events under that helmet include: 10km/15km Classic, 7.5km + 7.5km/ 15km + 15km Skiathlon, 30km/50km Mass Start Free, Sprint Free, Team Sprint Classic, 4 x 5km/4x10km Relay. The longer distances are the men’s races, and then on top of ALL THAT (there is! so much!) there’s a mixed team event. The key thing to know with XCS is there are two styles: The classical technique requires athletes to move their skis forward parallelly, while the freestyle technique (faster), needs skiers to move their feet in a side-to-side motion, like rollerblading. If you’re looking for something with a little more FIREPOWER: Enter the Biathlon. Have you ever been cross country skiing and wished you had a gun with you, so that you could practice shooting at a target? I know I have! Luckily there is this beautiful sport, one which asks and answers the question: How do we incorporate weapons into the winter olympics? Unsurprisingly, this sport is dominated by the Norwegians (Ole Einar Bjorndalen specifically on the Men’s side is the most decorated winter olympic athlete) but the Germans & Swedes (and the French, though their star Martin Fourcade has retired) put in some good efforts as well. Like XC, you’re going to see a lot of different distances across the 11 medal events (7/5/10km sprint, 10/12.5km pursuit, 12.5/15km mass start, 15/20km individual, plus relays), but the set up of those is pretty self explanatory. Then there’s maybe the weirdest little combo event on skis: The Nordic Combined. You know how they have the modern pentathlon in the summer olympics and everyone is like “Why’d you pair these random 5 sports together”? This is the abbreviated winter version, which consists of a cross country race (10km, or 4x5km in the relay) and some ski jumping (there’s one large hill & one normal). Do I get it? No! Apparently the Germans are traditionally very good at this, but there are some Japanese and Norwegian stars to keep an eye out for. You can skip this sport because RUDELY it is the only sport that has no events for women. WHAT YEAR IS IT FAM?!?!?!?!
Skating…On Ice!
Y’all here I was excited to come in here and talk about the figure skating and the Russian dominance and the speed skating and how I miss Apolo Ono (remember when he told that story about his dad leaving him at a cabin in the woods or something? Yeah me neither but I always liked him), and I almost completely forgot about one of my FAVORITE parts of the winter Olympics: ICE DANCING. The greatest show on ice (well, other than the beer fest I attended last weekend) is about to begin and do not even think about rolling your eyes at this intricate sport. Technically it falls under the Figure Skating category (and is included in the team event), and much like its sister sport, it consists of 2 programs: The Rhythm Dance (formerly the short dance) & the Free Dance. The rules are very specific: The rhythm dance must be performed to either a musical or an operetta (please comment below what musical you would dance to…personally I am feeling Thoroughly Modern Millie), you must include quickstep, blues, march, polka, foxtrot, swing, Charleston, and/or waltz, and you have to have a routing that is roughly 3min. HOW DOES ONE FOXTROT ON ICE?!?!?!!?!? These athletes are beyond compare, because that’s not the only requirements: there will also be some required lifts, a specific step sequence to include, and a predetermined dance pattern. This is the technical element of their program. For the free dance, the judges want to see INNOVATION and creativity and for the love of god SHOW ME SOME TWIZZLES (where they spin in sync first forward, then backward, on one foot). Ok actually the twizzles are THANKFULLY in both parts. The free dance has to include some LIFTS, some TURNS, and a bunch of different choreographic elements. They also have to be touching a majority of the time. Honestly? Putting together this routine sounds tough, I do not think I would make mat ice, and I do need a documentary on this. For more details, peep here. The other component of figure skating and I guess yeah sure the more famous is the men’s and women’s routines, which have a short program and a long program. For the men, you’re going to be looking for QUADS and just how many they can squeeze into their programs, for the ladies expect to see Russia & China dominate. There’s also the pairs competition (I’m sure you’ve seen the documentary, Blades of Glory, which gives you an idea of what to look for there) and the Team event which combines all of the Figure Skating into one big shebang.
and YES we also have speed skating, another sport which requires you to have MASSIVE THIGHS.Thicc thighs save lives baby. The USA used to be pretty dominant in speed skating but have fallen off in recent years (there was this drama with the outfits they were wearing, but to be real we have to admit the Dutch cracked some sort of Speed Skating Code and I think we should just let them have this), but that doesn’t mean there won’t be plenty of JUICE to watch in these races. I’ll assume you can figure out what this sport is based off its name (you…skate fast), but there are actually 2 types of speed skating at the Games: Short Track & Regular. The regular speed skating happens on a track the size of…well the size of a regular track (400m) and that’s where you’re going to see legends like Sven Kramer make skating a mile look wayyyyy too easy, and you just need to record the best time to win, but you’re only in a heat with 1 other skater typically. Events in the full track include: 500m, 1000m, 1500m, 5000m, 10000m, Mass Start & Team Pursuit (for Men & Women). This is the biggest sport (by number of events, which is 14). For Short Track speed skating, things are messier, the rink is about 1/4 of the size (111m, which seems like a very complicated choice but aight),and I guess you can compare it to the short distance running events of the summer, because it is VERY tricky to defend a title in. Like, over the past 2 olympics, no individual skater has defended their title. South Korea is sneaky incredible at this sport (their relay team DID defend their title), but Italian Ariana Fontana is a strong contender to medal again this time around. Events include: 500m, 1000, 1500m, 3000m Relay & the Mixed Team Relay. Expect to see some skates fly and a LOT of tumbling out.
Sledding… like you’ve never seen it before!
I for one was never the best at sledding because I would pause at the bottom of the hill to eat snow for ten minutes and then get cold from eating a ton of snow (fail to see the correlation there tbh), but I’ve always been a big fan of watching other people do it because 1) it’s kinda terrifying and 2) its one of those sports like “who invented this???” and 3) it has a lot of feel good stories. Events on sleds include: Bobsledding, Skeleton, and Luge. We stan the Bobsleigh not only because there’s been a lot of USA Dominance (Also very dominant: the Germans, who won every gold medal in 2018 in this sport), but because there is an “open event” in the 4 man where you basically get to choose whomever you want to participate (yahoo! sports without a gender binary! I mean they all pretty much choose men anyway but whatever!), and THIS YEAR they introduce the MONOBOB (single female rider in the sleigh) which just screams independent women! more like MONOBETTY am i right. Then there’s the classic 2 person bobsled, in which there is a PILOT and a PUSHER, and the aim is, you guessed it, to ZOOM DOWN THE TRACK THE FASTEST. That’s the general vibe with all the sliding sports but in Luge (on your back, feet first on the sled) and Skeleton (belly down, face first on the sled) you go even fast because the athletes are all skinny little legends. Luge is the sexier of the two, because besides men & women’s singles, and a relay event, there’s an open doubles competition, which just sounds spicy. The Germans (and often Austrians) tend to be the stars here. As for Skeleton, China dominated the last men’s podium, and GB tends to sweep the women’s .
Flips, Tricks, and McDoubles
Now that you have a good idea of the basics of skiing (do a pizza to stop!), it’s time to get a lil funky with it. These are the events like Ski Jumping and Freestyle Skiing. Ski Jumping might be the closest we get to shooting people out of a cannon as a stunt, invented in Norway (of course, those crazy guys!): Ya ski down a BIG ramp (there’s 2 different hills for men & one for women), you TAKE FLIGHT (???? insane????) then you try to land on the K-Line (ok ya sure), all while maintaining perfect form because this sport is JUDGED. It’s MADNESS I tell you! The stars of this sport are Norway (beginning to think they rigged these olympics), Austria, and Finland, and despite it being a part of the programme for a long time (1924) for men, women only made their olympic debut in 2014 (where are all the female ski jumpers??? I need an investigation into this).
Freestyle Skiing is an umbrella term for: ya gonna see some crazy tricks while on skis. It includes everything from Aerials (slide downhill, go off a ramp, do tricks in the air 1 time), Halfpipe (X Games style), Slopestyle (kinda like an obstacle course, with tricks), Moguls (the one with the REALLY BUMPY downhill), Ski Cross (which is like down hill, but with a bunch of skiiers at once, and there are big turns and bumps and opportunities for air), and lastly a DEBUT: BIG AIR (name needs workshopping, but it’s essentially like ski jumping, but instead of staying put after take off, they do a heck ton of tricks). There’s a lot we’re glossing over here (like there’s a trick called a rudy, but we don’t really have time to cover it), but these are events focused very closely on technical ability and creativity, and they are EXTREMELY exciting to watch.
The other contingent of what I like to call the Cool Kids of the Winter Games is SNOWBOARDING, a sport the United States invented when we realized we weren’t winning enough at the winter games. These athletes are a crowd favorite, because they do all these cool tricks and stuff and then in every interview they’re like “bruh that was a gnarly run” (actually they’re kind of the Tony Romo’s of the winter olympics? Also I wish I was exaggerating but I am not), and for that they are all iconic! You’ll see the US of A dominate all over snowboarding across all the events, including men’s and women’s: BIG AIR, snowboard cross, the half pipe, slopestyle, mixed team cross, and parallel slalom. Keep an eye out for GB and the Czechs, who have also decided to be cool kids and have some competition for team USA.
Team Sports
Sadly if they’re is one thing the winter sports are definitely lacking, it’s TEAM spirit. Luckily figure skating and skiing have added team events in the past few olympics, but if we are talking about good ol’ fashioned tournament style team sports, we basically have HOCKEY and CURLING. If you don’t have a basic idea of how hockey works, well, no judgment friendo but I think you are past the point of no return and I’m not sure if this blog will help you. I mean there are a LOT of rules that can be tricky to keep track of, but that’s also true in football, and we make it through watching that every week, so I am sure you can figure it out. The main thing to know for the men’s side of things in hockey is that for the second Olympics in a row, no NHL players will be participating…aka it’s going to be a young man’s game. That means you’ll be missing most of the hockey players you’ve actually heard of, which YES is very irritating. We don’t have time to get into why the NHL and the IOC hate each other, but in short, the NHL refuses to let the Olympics disrupt their season, and then they were maybe going to reach an agreement this year, and then Omicron happened, so they were like WE DON’T HAVE TIME FOR THE OLYMPICS RIGHT NOW. I mean…read the room NHL is the first week of february and these games are happening in a time zone 13 hours ahead of the USA, NONE OF US HAVE TIME FOR THE OLYMPICS RIGHT NOW. And yet, here were are, and it’s thrilling. Expect to see the fake russian team (ROC) dominate, Canada to put in a solid effort, and the USA may go for an unlikely miracle on ice. On the women’s side of hockey, things get more interesting, because this is a something the USA is actually good at! We have a famous rivalry with our neighbors to the north of course; the US and Canada have been in the gold medal match for most of the last thirty years of ‘lympics. You may recall that last Olympics the US Women won gold for the first time since Nagano (1998, aka 20 years!), and they kept that streak alive at the International Hockey Federation’s World Cup this past august. Much of that gold-medal-winning squad will be returning, and the stage is set for us to see Canada in the finals once again, but keep an eye out for some upsets (Finland is sneaky).
Last but certainly not least, there is the beautiful game of Curling. Someone once though, hey what if we swept on ice? And we have been blessed ever since. People often hate on curling because the stars make it look super easy and SLOW, but it is a game of strategy and skill and, perhaps most importantly, very cool pants. Also, lots of curling athletes are just like, regular people with full time jobs most of the time (this could be where we finally qualify!) Though the sport was invented in Scotland, Canada is the most dominant, with Sweden right behind them in the medal count. For those who know shuffleboard, the rules are similar: Curlers have throwers & sweepers and they’re trying to slide their stone into a target, closer to the center than their opponent. For those who know cornhole: you know defense is the best offense, and like you’d love to knock an opponent’s bag off the board, it’s ideal to push a stone out of the circle. Each team throws 8 stones (2 stones per round), and there will be 2 sweepers up until the tee line, after which 1 sweeper will attempt to smooth the ice in order to direct the stone. There will be a women’s tournament, men’s and mixed doubles, all of which start in a round robin, and all of which ALREADY STARTED so HURRY UP AND TUNE IN!!!! You will not regret it, for the pants alone!
Schedules & Looking Ahead
Look, we know, this is a lot to digest, but we can assure you that you are in good hands when it comes to Olympic Commentators (mainly Tara Lipinski & Johnny Weir but others do an okay job as well), and this is meant just to give you a general idea of what these sports are, what medal events to look for, and what to expect when you’re expecting (the USA to win golds). You can find more schedules of competition here, and we highly encourage you to watch some of the underrated sports (cough, curling, cough cough) or the silent gems (cough, ice dancing cough cough) or a debut (MONOBOBOMBOBONOMOB). We’ll do our best to update you on the medal counts through the games, and make sure to peep our ATHLETES TO WATCH post and our GENERAL BEIJING INFORMATION post if you haven’t already. Cheers!
