Winter Olympic Sports

I’ve come to realize in discussions with a few different people that not everyone knows what sports will be held at next week’s Winter Olympic Games. The Winter Games are on a smaller scale as compared to the Summer Games. That is why the Winter Games are often held in smaller venues than the Summer Games. The best example of this is the upcoming Winter Games being held in Turin, Italy as compared to the 2008 Summer Games to be held in Beijing, China.

While there are multiple events held at each Games, sports are grouped into a variety of sports categories. Another demonstration of how much smaller the Winter Games are as compared to the Summer Games is in the number of sports categories: 29 categories for the Summer Games, 7 for the Winter Games. Here are examples of each of the sports categories, with an explanation of each accompanied with the Olympic symbol for the category and which events fall into that category.

BIATHLON
Olympic Sport since 1960
This sport is a combination of cross country skiing and rifle shooting. There are a total of ten different races, 5 men’s and 5 women’s. These races differ in distance and number of competitors (single or relay).

BOBSLEIGH
Olympic Sport since 1924
This category includes both bobsled and skeleton. There are three bobsled events: men’s two man, men’s four man, and women’s (which used two competitors). Skeleton, a race in which competitors sled down a course head first reaching speeds up to 95 miles per hour, was added in 2002 and have both a men’s and women’s race.

CURLING
Olympic Sport since 1924
A team sport, played on the ice, has medals for both men’s and women’s competitions.

ICE HOCKEY
Olympic Sport since 1920
There are events for both men and women, in which the American women are heavily favored to win gold.

LUGE
Olympic Sport since 1964
A high speed race in which people sled feet first down a course while lying down. There is a men’s race, a women’s race, and a doubles race where both men and women can compete against each other.

SKATING
Olympic Sport since 1908
This category includes speed skating, short track speed skating and figure skating. There are 12 different races in the speed skating program: 6 for men and 6 for women. Short track speed skating (added to the Olympics in 1992) has 7 men’s races and 7 women’s races. Figure skating, which was added to the Olympic program in 1924, has men’s, women’s, pairs, and ice dancing competitions.

SKIING
Olympic Sport since 1924
There are many events encompassed in this category. Included in the skiing category is alpine/downhill skiing (added in 1936), cross-country skiing, freestyle skiing (added in 1994), ski jumping, nordic combined (ski jumping and cross-country skiing combined), and snowboarding (added in 1998). There are multiple events within each of these sports for both male and female competitors.