Real Winter Olympics

When I first started this blog I took a look at what I meant by a “Real Sport”. You can review that article, or you just hang with me here and I’ll tell you that you need apply only one rule when determining the status of a sport, either real…or not. Simply apply the helmet test. Does the participant wear a helmet? Then yes, it is a real sport.
So let’s take a look at the Winter Olympics and se what’s real and what’s not.

Helmets
Alpine skiing
Bobsled
Freestyle Skiing
Hockey
Luge
Nordic Combined
Short Track
Skeleton
Ski Jumping
Snowboarding
Speed Skating

No helmet
Biathlon
Cross-country
Curling
Figure Skating
Nordic Combined

Luge, skeleton and bobsled, yep, helmets. Are these guys sane? Real sport or extreme sport?

The Nordic combined might be the oddest pairing of competitions, ski jumping and X-country. One all balls, the other so lame. I’ll let you decide which is which.

Ah curling, um…no. No I’ve gotten a little flack about liking figure skating, but this is the DUMBEST ‘sport’ ever. What can possibly be dumber than sweeping ice? And I love the replays they show of the draw. Do we really need a slow motion replay of a rock that is already moving at a mere 5 mph? That’s about 8 kph for you Canadians. Hilarious! And, even better, they get time outs! What do you need a time out for? And how about that Curling Caliper? That is some serious hardware for determining the winner of a close match. That isn’t something you just buy at the hardware store. While I was watching the US-Swiss match the Swiss spent SO much time discussing a draw that even the announcers were getting impatient. Or bored, is that possible? Hehehe.

Ok, so I like figure skating despite the fact that it isn’t a real sport. I’ve been accused of having a little frou-frou in my step, and I do like a latte, a good latte, with a lot of espresso, but so what? Figure skaters are like the rock stars of the Olympics. They wear the costumes, they rock it out to the music, they get the girls…er…ok, forget that.

Biathlon – helmets? No, but guns! Can we call this what it really is? A bunch of guys got kicked out of their house by their wives up in Norway and decided to ski around and shoot things. Somehow it turned into an Olympic event. Face it; this would be a lot more interesting if these guys were shooting at a dunk-tank target with Lindsey Vonn sitting on the bench with nothing on but a white t-shirt.

So about 2/3 of the Winter Olympics are real sports, that would account for all the time I’m spending in front of the boob-tube!

I’ll leave you with this picture. A X-country skier crashing off the course. Really, were you going about 10 mph or what? How does that happen?

-From the Point