What Types Of Athletes Will Be Competing For The Gold Medal At The 2010 Winter Games
The 2010 Winter Olympic Games are rapidly approaching with athletes from all around the world getting ready to compete for the first place medal. The winter Olympics are quite a bit smaller than the summer Olympics as there are fewer choices for winter sports played as during the summer ones. There are also less countries and athletes competing as some countries do not have these sports or the winter climate or terrain to sustain a winter sport. This does not always stop athletes, however, as evidenced by the Jamaican bobsledding team several years ago. They took fast runners and athletes from Jamaica and taught them the basics of the bobsled using a wooden cart on wheels. Their entry into the Olympics was a big crowd pleaser. This article mentions a few of the various sports at the Olympics Games performed by some athletes like the telluride ski instructor that teaches telluride ski lessons and will be participating in the giant Slalom event.
Ice hockey is one of the favorite fan spectator sports to witness at the Olympic events. One of the most famous gold medal final games was the 1980 match of the USA against Russia where the US came out on top. It had always male only event but now women's ice hockey is also an Olympic sport. Other types of skating sports that are popular is speed skating, ice dancing and figure skating. These popular competitions bring in large audiences.
The USA team has always had top performers in these events as well with Apolo Anton Ohno competing in his third Olympic games this year in speed short track skating. Figure skating success stories in the past have been Dorothy Hamill, Scott Hamilton and Nancy Kerrigan who missed out on getting gold when her competitions boyfriend injured her in an attack the day before the Olympics.
Some of the sports that spectators enjoy watching are the ones that they only get to witness on the Olympics like bobsledding, luge or curling. These less popular sports have their spotlight during the Winter Olympics where they can show off their abilities and talents in sports that are not normally played in every state or country. Bobsledding and luge are thrilling and fast races where a sled races down an icy tube to the finish. In order to find athletes for these sports some coaches go to other states to seek out younger kids that could be a good fit for that sport. This happened in Colorado where the US luge team put on a demo and got some interested kids involved. A couple of the athletes competed in the last Olympic Games as a result of this exhibition. Curling is a sport that is mainly played in the norhtern midwest and is a calmer sport very similar to bocce ball but on ice.
Downhill ski racing and Nordic skiing are also big sports in the winter games. The downhill skiers and snowboarders thrive on speed and an element of danger and the Nordic skier have extreme stamina and endurance.
