It is more or less basically winter, and that means it is kinda sorta almost time for the Winter Olympics to once again grace the television screens of at least 15 people. This creates an obvious opportunity to analyze one of the most entertaining spectacles in the mainstream sporting world (with the obvious exception of the events broadcast on famed network ESPN8: “The Ocho”). The Winter Olympics are on some level superfluous, serving to represent a comparably tiny smattering of sports.
However these sports are, on average, much more intense than those in the Summer Olympics. For instance, there are three different sports relating to cross-country skiing (regarded by many as one of the hardest mainstream sports), including the sport itself, biathlon (wherein competitors stop and shoot targets with the rifles they carry on their backs as they ski cross-country), and Nordic combined (in which a ski jump is performed, followed later in the day by a lengthy cross-country race), as well as the many other skiing and snowboarding events. In addition to this are sports like skeleton, bobsleigh, and luge, all of which routinely feature crashes, injuries, and deaths of athletes. The Summer Olympics have few sports even approaching the danger and intensity levels of these competitions.
The only issue with these games are how few sports they have, especially when the natural comparison is made to the Summer Olympics. This could be rectified by the adaptation of some Summer sports. For instance, race walking. For far too long race walking has taken place upon a pavement track without making use of the natural beauty of the host countries. Alpine race walking would both add extra dimensions of difficulty to this already ridiculously arduous event. It doesn’t stop there. Ice hockey. Winter pentathlon. Snow volleyball (after all, volleyball and beach volleyball are already Olympic sports). All of these would be great additions to the Games, which would in turn help to bring in even more intense competition and a level of parity between the two Olympics. Even without these additions, as it is now,
8/10
However these sports are, on average, much more intense than those in the Summer Olympics. For instance, there are three different sports relating to cross-country skiing (regarded by many as one of the hardest mainstream sports), including the sport itself, biathlon (wherein competitors stop and shoot targets with the rifles they carry on their backs as they ski cross-country), and Nordic combined (in which a ski jump is performed, followed later in the day by a lengthy cross-country race), as well as the many other skiing and snowboarding events. In addition to this are sports like skeleton, bobsleigh, and luge, all of which routinely feature crashes, injuries, and deaths of athletes. The Summer Olympics have few sports even approaching the danger and intensity levels of these competitions.
The only issue with these games are how few sports they have, especially when the natural comparison is made to the Summer Olympics. This could be rectified by the adaptation of some Summer sports. For instance, race walking. For far too long race walking has taken place upon a pavement track without making use of the natural beauty of the host countries. Alpine race walking would both add extra dimensions of difficulty to this already ridiculously arduous event. It doesn’t stop there. Ice hockey. Winter pentathlon. Snow volleyball (after all, volleyball and beach volleyball are already Olympic sports). All of these would be great additions to the Games, which would in turn help to bring in even more intense competition and a level of parity between the two Olympics. Even without these additions, as it is now,
8/10
