Winter Olympics

And so the Winter Olympics have come to an end.  And by now, we are all experts in all things Winter Olympics, no? No.  At least, not me.

Triple Axle, Triple Lutz, Triple Toe Loop? A jump, a jump, a jump.  Don’t ask me to tell you the difference.  A Triple Toe Loop/Double Lutz Combo? Two jumps together.

Now, a Quad vs a Triple?  Yes.  One is a jump in the air where you spin around 4 times, and the other, 3 times.

A Salchow? I know it’s not anything to do with a pig-cow or a sallow cow.  The Camel Spin and the Backspin?  One involves the leg sticking out I think and really does not look anything like a camel so not sure how it got its name.  And a Twizzle? Not a licorice candy. 

Now, the Death Spiral I get.  It’s pretty clear to see that one wrong move and she’s toast.  Gotta hope he’s got some stickum on his gloves and that his depth perception is 100% on point.  Along with his arm strength.

Some other things surprised me this year.  I have been watching the Olympics for as long as I can remember.  And I am 62. So that’s a pretty long time.  I have never heard of the Skeleton event until this year.  I had to google it.  It was first introduced in 1928.  Then not again until 1948.  And then not again until 2002 and since then has remained in the Games. 

Hmm, I think that somewhere some people figured out that hurtling yourself face down, head forward on a flat sled going really, really fast might be a dangerous thing.  But by 2002 someone said, ‘ah what the heck, if people are crazy enough to do it, and people will watch it, let’s put it in the program!” 

And so it was resurrected.  Which if some Skeleton Olympians aren’t really careful, may find themselves Resurrected. Into the After Life.  Perhaps that is why it is called the Skeleton? You could end up as nothing but bones.

I cannot explain however, why I am only aware of this Skeleton event this year when there have been 5 Olympics before this one for me to have witnessed it.  I’ll blame it on the programming, which over the past several Olympics has gotten kind of janky. 

I think you need a PhD in Olympic Sport Watching to figure out what channel and what time to watch whatever event you want to watch.  I think there were like 5 different channels this year? And I am not even counting streaming. 

The worst was when if you were watching say, Ice Skating (if you haven’t figured it out by now, my favorite Winter Olympic sport), on one channel only to have them cut to say the Skeleton (which I think is how I discovered the Skeleton). I had to find the other channel where they were airing the rest of Ice Skating. 

And then there’s always the decision to watch it live, which depending on who the host country is, might mean 1 am, in which case, that’s not really a decision you have to make.  Unless you are an insomniac.  This year’s 6 hour time difference did however offer you the choice of live vs prime-time.

Another event I swear I had never seen before was the Two Men Laying On Top of Each Other on a Luge.  Also known as Two-Man Luge.  Unless you are a woman.  Then it is called Women’s Doubles Luge. I guess Two-Woman Luge doesn’t have the same ring to it. 

Either way, it’s two crazy people hurtling themselves on a flat board, albeit feet first, so increasing their safety factor by a millimeter (it’s the Olympics, so we’ll go with the metric system.  You know.  The metric system which, when I was in grade school, they told us our whole country would be converting to and so we all had to learn it.  I am going to guess that we failed miserably in that regard, which is not a hard guess because in fact, we did fail miserably, and so the whole idea was abandoned.)

The Doubles Luge was introduced in 1964. So again, I have no good reason as to how I am not familiar with this one. 

One I am familiar with though, but which, after years of watching the Olympics, I still don’t understand, is Curling.  To me, it looks like a cross between Bocce Ball, Shuffleboard, and Housecleaning.  It’s really hard to watch this event and not laugh.  I mean no disrespect, truly.  I am sure it requires great skill and athleticism.  But it just looks funny and is really hard to take seriously.  I mean, it’s called Curling.  That’s something one does to their hair. To be fair, though I have never sat through and watched a whole Curling event.  So I am certainly not one to judge here.

One event that has me wondering, ‘how do they learn to do that’, is the Ski Jump.  I imagine you start out as a little kid on a little ski jump.  And then what? Is it graduated ski jumps in size?  What is the ratio of injuries in learning this sport as compared to say, oh I don’t know, curling?

Ah well.  Questions to ponder.  We’ve got four more years until the next Winter Olympics to figure it all out. 

Meanwhile, the Summer Olympics are only 2 years away.  Where it’s very clear and easy to tell a vault from a beam from the uneven parallel bars.