I colleague of mine was disgusted by the medal disparity and the subsequent attention particular athletes get. Take Apolo Ohno as an example. He gets to compete in the same event over and over again. Sure, it could be argued that but 1500m is different than 500m. But is it really that different? Largely you see almost every speedskating event begin with some minor jockey-ing for position followed by two really intense laps at the end … same thing regardless of the distance. Just listening to the announcers pretty much confirms it, “and watch as they maintain that pace saving it for the end.” Thus, a world class speedskater could come home with a bunch of medals and hail themselves as Winter Olympics champion with X lifetime medals.

But cross that with something like hockey. There’s a whole lot games leading up to one medal event. Or even in skiing. Just because you can Super G doesn’t mean you can long jump, cross country or perform in the biathlon. You get your one event. So it always seems a little false when a particular athlete is hailed as this all star when all they did was do the same skill in the same event a few times.

Indeed. Can it be a sport if the only people who play it are athletes preparing for the next winter games?

Was it ever an historical winter activity anywhere?

Could any Olympic standard ice luge facility provider in the USA get public liability insurance?

Some teams have to prepare without an ice facility at all.

I think curling is misunderstood, but Ice Dancing I think I understand very well: not worth my time. Curling I find fascinating, despite the fact that my wife refers to it as Olympic paint drying (which I insist is a summer sport), but I guess that is just the physicist in me.

One thing about the Winter Olympics that I noticed this year was that many of the athletes (at least from the Western Hemisphere) had fairly priveledged upbringing. While watching the parade of nations during the opening ceremonies, I remember the NBC announcer talking about the star athletes from each country that walked past.

The Grand Cayman athlete was especially entertaining. He said something to the effect of:

he attended boarding school in New England before moving on to Brown (or some other Ivy League school) and now he splits his time between his studies and Aspen where he practices. And in spite of all of that hardship, he still somehow managed to make it to the Winter Olympics

It was just too funny. But it does seem that rich countries and rich people are in greater supply at the Winter Olympics than at the Summer Olympics. Maybe that is because most rich countries have snow and the poorer countries often have none.

Lastly, biathlon is the weirdest, awesomest event they have. I mean mixing skiing with guns? Check plus. Now if they could create some kind of team event with paintball guns. You know, reenact the vicious snowbound fights of Russia and Finland. Kind of like a ski cross update for the biathlon.