Snow Skills

The Winter Olympics is surely the elite of sporting competitions with regard to the limited number of athletes who are ultimately successful in their events. Consider that the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens dished out at least 925 medals in 28 different sports. Not all sports are created equal, but the Summer Games has many sports with many different variations of events. Swimming is particularly a sport where the medals seem to be awarded in excess. At the end of the Summer Games, someone is the best in the world at doing the freestyle 2 laps in the pool. Somebody else is the best at freestyle 4 laps, another at 8 laps, another at 2 laps in breaststroke, etc. etc. With so many events, it’s not uncommon for an swimmers to have the opportunity to win multiple medals in different events at the same Games.

Rowing is another example where dozens of medals are awarded for essentially the same activity. There’s one person, two person, 4 person, and 8 person teams competing in several different lengths of events. With all due respect to the built-like-brick-outhouse rowing athletes of the world, at some point it’s just rowing a boat, no matter how many are doing it or how far you’re going.

The Winter Olympics have no such glut of medals. Consider the women’s downhill skiing event where only three medals will be given; gold, silver, and bronze. Downhill racers have unique skills to be able to compete at speeds up to 85 mph for those three medals, so if you’re a downhiller, you better be fast on that day since there isn’t another Olympic downhill event for 4 years. Ice hockey is another good example of the purism of the Winter Olympics. Several hundred athletes, men and women, will thrown themselves into a process that requires winning several 60 minute games against the best athletes on the planet. After all that effort, when the ice chips settle, only 6 medals total will be awarded to 3 each well-deserving male and female teams. With that kind of competition, it’s likely that there will be several very good hockey teams going back to their home countries without a medal. And that’s about as pure as it can get.

In the end, there’s only seven sports to compete in at Torino 2006. That’s all Winter Olympians get, just seven sports. These seven sports are Biathlon, Bobsleigh, Curling, Ice Hockey, Luge, Skating, Snowboarding, and Skiing. Sure, there’s different events within those sports as well, but only a total of 82 medals will be awarded. Practically every athlete will get one, just one opportunity to achieve one of those scarce medals and that’s what makes the Winter Games the hard way to be an Olympic Champion.

i would like to thak you for all of the info you have given me. however i think u should put some peoples names that are compeating in the oylimpics