by Bob Sparrow
If I thought I was going to get off the couch because football had ended, I was sadly mistaken – the Olympics have kept me firmly planted in front of the boob tube. And for whatever reason I always seem to turn on the TV when curling is going on, which was quite often. Being raised in California, I never curled, never heard of curling until recently, and after watching it for hours, I’m still not sure of all the rules, although it’s somehow magnetizing. I don’t fully understand it, but it seems like shuffleboard on ice, but not exactly. Watching men and women from all over the world curl, I wondered how they first became interested in seeing how accurate they are at sliding a rock on a sheet of ice. And while they were inventing the game they said, “Hey, let’s add a person or two with a broom to sweep a path on the ice for the rock to follow.”
I’ve learned that Canada had a very strong curling team and in fact, won the men’s gold medal this year, beating Great Britian. Really? Great Britian?!! I would have thought that countries like Norway, Finland and Sweden, where there is lots of ice, would be in there somewhere, although the game was invented in Scotland.
But curling isn’t the only ‘unusual’ sport in the Winter Olympics – it’s like a committee sat down and thought about all the things one could do in the snow and on the ice and said, “Hey, let’s create some games out of this stuff and call it the Winter Olympics.” One of the first games they thought of was the biathlon, which would combine two things that naturally go together, cross country skiing and shooting a rifle! This year’s Olympics added a new sport, Ski Mountaineering, or ‘Skimo’ as it’s called, where one climbs up a mountain, either on skis or on foot carrying skis and then skis down the mountain. A woman from Switzerland and a man from Spain won the gold this year. I was on the edge of my seat!
There was of course all kinds of sledding, including ‘skeleton’, which seems like a fairly scary name for a sledding event. Sledding events include one and two person sledders either headfirst or feetfirst – perhaps going down sideways may be added in years to come. Basically, all the sledding is just man or woman against gravity – gravity always wins.
Probably one of the most interesting ‘outdoor’ sports at the Olympics is on the ‘half pipe’ with lots of turns, spins and flips with an occasional interesting crash landing. Practicing to perfect those moves has to be very painful, but fun to watch!
Aside from speed skating, which, to me, is just people going around in circles, the indoor sports, like hockey and figure skating hold the most interest. The U.S. did win gold this year in hockey, with a dramatic overtime win over archrival Canada – but since players from both teams play in the NHL, for me, it loses a little something relative to the original amateur spirit of the Olympics. Although, being an amateur was eliminated from a lot of Olympic sports years ago.
I think the highest bar for performance in the Winter Olympics is in the pair ice dancing. France took the gold, U.S. took the silver and Canada took the bronze. The amount of time and skill required to coordinate all the jumps, spins and dance moves that make it look so graceful and effortless, is amazing.
But, now the Olympics are over and I guess I need to get into college basketball and wait for ‘March Madness’. Or, maybe turn off the TV and enjoy some of our great outdoor weather. Nah, March Madness is only about three weeks away – I think I can make it back on the couch by then!
