Opinion – An Olympic tribute to questionable ideas

A weekly opinion column on the issues of the day from an overworked, independent journalist.

Every Winter Olympics, I watch in awe.

And every Winter Olympics, I quietly whisper, “Who approved this?”

Luge is the first red flag. You lie on your back on what appears to be a sharpened cafeteria tray and rocket down an ice chute at freeway speeds. Feet first. Inches from the ice. Wearing what I can only assume is a very determined facial expression.

Then someone said, “Nice. But what if… head first?”

That’s skeleton.

Same frozen plumbing system. Same outrageous speed. Just now your face is leading the way, your chin is approximately three millimetres above the ice while you hurtle down the refrigerated waterslide designed by engineers who I hope were well rested.

And then there’s bobsleigh, which feels like four people got together and said, “What if we all went through this chaos at once?” It starts with a full sprint on ice, followed by everyone diving into a carbon fibre missile and hoping the walls of the track remain optional.

Alpine downhill At some point in history, a person looked at a perfectly good mountain and said, “I have an idea. Let’s strap two five-foot boards to our feet and race to the bottom. First one down wins.”

Add, 140 km/h, suspiciously decorative gates, occasional jumps, no brakes and no steering wheel.

You win using Just gravity and confidence.

Snowboard cross appears to have been invented after someone watched downhill skiing and said, “This is good… but what if we added elbows?” It’s motocross, but colder. And with more airborne collisions.

Next we have ski jumping. The sport where an athlete skis toward the edge of a cliff and instead of slowing down, commits fully to flight. Not metaphorical flight. Actual, hang-in-the-air, rethink-your-life-choices flight.

And if that wasn’t enough time spent defying gravity, along comes freestyle aerials.

This is ski jumping’s ambitious cousin. Same launch. Same commitment. But now, instead of simply landing, the athlete throws in two or three flips with twists, just to prove they can. They disappear into the sky, rotate like a winter gymnast, and reappear hoping the landing slope is exactly where they left it.

You’d think that would be enough safety defying sports for one olympic cycle, but we’re just getting started.

Biathlon feels like someone couldn’t decide between endurance sport and target practice. So they chose both. Ski hard enough to make your lungs question your life choices, then calmly lie down and shoot at something the size of a cookie 50 metres away. Miss? Enjoy an extra lap. Nothing says focus like aiming a rifle while your heart is doing drum solos.

And just when that combination feels peak creativity, enter Nordic combined.

First, you ski jump off a cliff. Then, after proving you are comfortable with short-term human flight, you strap back in and go cross-country skiing for distance. It’s as if someone said, “You know what this needs? Cardio.”

Speed skating looks elegant until you realize they are essentially racing on knives. Long track is smooth and tactical, with athletes leaning into corners at angles that make physics nervous. Short track is a tightly packed swarm moving at highway speed, where one wobble turns into a full ice-yard sale in seconds.

Finally, moguls, something of which one of our local young athletes agrees sounds goes like this.

And then there’s moguls. Imagine skiing down a field of frozen basketballs while also launching yourself into the air to perform flips and twists. Judges score speed, turns and aerial tricks, which means you are being evaluated on how stylishly you survive what looks like a very aggressive staircase.

Every four years, the Winter Olympics gather the best athletes on Earth.

And every four years, I remain convinced that somewhere, long ago, someone looked at snow and said,

“Let’s make this interesting.”

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