If for the summer games, the ultimate medal is the 100m, what is it for the winter olympics.
I vote for the downhill. It’s like the ultimate thing that every kid who did anything on snow has done…who slides to the bottom of the hill fastest, forget about safety. It’s like the 100m in the summer…2 kids on the sports field, one sprints across the field first.
To me downhill is the ultimate winter event that anyone who did anything on snow can kind of relate to even if you never put on skis and slid down the hill on your butt in your snowsuit, maybe with one of those magic carpet things!
I’ll throw bobsled out there. It’s different in that not many can relate to it, but it’s just so iconic - only time most people ever see it is every 4 years on tv for the winter olympics.
Or if they watch cool runnings, which depicts the olympics.
The equivalent would be the Cross Country Sprint, but it is kind of lame.
I much prefer the Biathlon events
What I am getting at is most kids have sprinted across a sports field so Bolt was the ultimate human in that at the Summer games (well, until he was no longer). What do kids do on snow? Either they race downhill on skis (first to the bottom of the hill), or on a sled. But I don’t think that bobsled even remotely relates to sledding on the local hill, but downhill skiing does. Most kids on snow, don’t try to outsprint each other on cross country skis since it takes around 5 years on XC skis to even get close to doing anything fast on those for little kids. But they can still fly fast downhill on any type of skis (be they cross country, downhill). At a personal level, I can relate to XC ski sprinting, having done some of those races, but very few actually ever get to the point that they can move fast on flat ground (or uphill). That’s why I think downhill is the premier event. Stuff like figure skating might get coverage, but almost no one has experienced what those athletes can do.
The equivalent would be the Cross Country Sprint, but it is kind of lame.
Where’d you get that? In XC, the marquee event is the men’s 50km. The winner is the undisputed boss, and in good years it will come down to a 2-up Sprint.
I think it should be skeleton- it isn’t and probably never will be- but anyone who pulls that off faster than the others who try should be celebrated as pure bad-ass. Anyone who lives/lived in cold weather sled down a hill as a kid. Sledding down a hill head first was much more fun.
I think it should be skeleton- it isn’t and probably never will be- but anyone who pulls that off faster than the others who try should be celebrated as pure bad-ass. Anyone who lives/lived in cold weather sled down a hill as a kid. Sledding down a hill head first was much more fun.
Yeah, I can definitely relate (in a loose way) to the skeleton athlete. Find the steepest hills close to home, wait for the day after freezing rain, trek to the top when it is blue ice and then launch yourself downhill head first and hope your speed is not so fast that your buddies end up halfway in the middle of the street across from the hill with a school bus rolling down the street (that you probably missed because you decided to do the blue ice skeleton replica, rather than be a good kid and wait properly at the bus stop)…why are we even alive???
The 50k is cool the Sprint is super short. Like 3.5 minutes. Hard effort for sure.
…also the 50K and the sprint are turning into almost the same event…by the end the sprint finish is the same for both !!! I suppose that’s like saying that the finish in the velodrome in Roubaix they could just get rid of the entire 7 hours of riding before the velodrome, but that would not be Paris Roubaix. I do enjoy watching the sprint events for sure. It is way more exciting than the downhill. I’ve been watching these guys come down runs now for few hours and after a while watching a sequence of guys on an 1:40 downhill TT looks like the same. Perhaps like when I watch Formula 1 qualifying. It’s fun to watch a few pilots, but then you wait till Sunday for the head to head racing. XC skiing sprints head to head is a blast to watch!
If for the summer games, the ultimate medal is the 100m, what is it for the winter olympics.
I vote for the downhill. It’s like the ultimate thing that every kid who did anything on snow has done…who slides to the bottom of the hill fastest, forget about safety. It’s like the 100m in the summer…2 kids on the sports field, one sprints across the field first.
To me downhill is the ultimate winter event that anyone who did anything on snow can kind of relate to even if you never put on skis and slid down the hill on your butt in your snowsuit, maybe with one of those magic carpet things!
From the perspective of a Brit with very little national interest in winter sports to cheer on, I’d agree with the downhill. I didn’t know much about winter sports as a kid, and there was very little media coverage of them (other than Eddie the Eagle and Torvill and Dean), but the downhill was the one I’d always tune in for and the only event where there was much name recognition. Even in UK names like Klammer and Killy were pretty iconic. And the top skiers seemed the most like sprinters in terms of the swagger, the sponsors, etc.
Bobsled is cool but it’s a team event, I honestly couldn’t name a single bobsledder. Cross country is the winter equivalent of the Olympic walking events to somebody from a country without snow, with biathlon being even more obscure. Ice hockey is always fun to watch, but as a team sport it doesn’t compare to the 100m.
I grew up in a ski town in Colorado. For us the premier Olympics was the Winter Games and not the summer games, and what we respected most was the Combined. Taking the technical aspects of the slalom and the guts of the downhill and awarding the best alpine skier - that was what we cherished the most.
Now, as a lunger, my multisport endurance crew is pretty stoked about all things nordic - perhaps biathlon is the fav.
I would guess the premier money making medal would be the half pipe snowboard gold in endorsements, general fame, talk show guest, and lecture circuit. I would rather win any color biathlon, xc ski or speed skating medal for personal satisfaction. Those athletes are the real rock stars in my world.
I think the downhill is generally considered the “premier” event. I don’t find it nearly as interesting as non-TT nordic events (biathlon and xc), but then again I also prefer the 10,000 to the 100m.
The equivalent would be the Cross Country Sprint, but it is kind of lame.
No, in terms of prestige, it’s the 50K/30K for sure.
In alpine skiing it’s the downhill** or the combined**.
I respecfully disagree with regard to the status of alpine combined In my opinion it is the least prestigous of the alpine events. I’d vote for dowhill.
