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Shovel's avatar

One of the most strategic and interesting Winter Sports is curling, and sometimes it's referred to as "chess on ice."

Originated in 16th-century Scotland, it's now a staple of the Winter Olympics. Played on a sheet of ice, teams of four take turns sliding 20kg granite stones towards a circular target known as the house, aiming to get their stones closer to the centre button than their opponents. Each of these teams has its roles: delivering the stones and then strategising their placement while sweeping peculiar factors whereby players use brooms to lessen friction and thus control the speed and direction of the stone-plays an important role. Matches generally contain 8 to 10 ends, similar to innings, and points are counted based on how many stones come closer to the button as compared to that of their opponent.

Curling has been an Olympic sport since 1998, with Canada historically being dominant, though Niklas Edin of Sweden and Silvana Tirinzoni of Switzerland are currently two of the best. This is a game of precision, teamwork, and strategy in which a perfectly executed shot or even a cleverly done defensive play is satisfying to watch. The combination of skill and strategy in curling creates thrills for both the player and fan in this winter sport.

Alex Sinclair's avatar

I've always wanted to try curling! It looks deeply satisfying

Shovel's avatar

The best I got at it is when I was playing a mini game on Rayman I think it was haha tried it In real life and I was awful!

Alex Sinclair's avatar

The closest I've tried is 'ice-free curling' in which the stones are on wheels. They gave us brooms too, explaining 'This will do absolutely nothing as there's no ice, but we know you'll want to do some sweeping anyway.' They were right.

Shovel's avatar

That's more than I've done hahah

Sturmer's avatar

Shovel Racing

You might think I’m joking when I say shovel racing is a sport, but I’m not. This tradition has been around for over 50 years, complete with its own set of rules, a world championship, and coverage by major sports outlets.

History

Shovel racing originated in the 1970s at Angel Fire Resort in New Mexico. Initially, it was a practical way for workers to move around the snowy resort quickly. Using simple aluminum shovels, they discovered that, despite the hilarity of the setup, racers could reach speeds of up to 70 miles per hour. What started as a functional activity quickly evolved into competitive sport.

Rules

As the sport gained popularity, participants began modifying their shovels with skis, aerodynamic pods, and other enhancements to gain an edge. The competition committee eventually banned all such modifications to preserve fairness and safety. Now, only lubrication of the shovel’s main body and minor decorations to the stem are allowed.

Safety is important, with racers required to wear helmets and friction-resistant suits to prevent skin burns during crashes.

The objective is simple - race downhill faster than everyone else. Each competitor gets two runs, and the fastest run determines their placement in the finals.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/i7915-aslVI?feature=oembed

Race Categories

  • Men’s Ages 13+

  • Women’s Ages 13+

  • Kids "Little Scoops" Ages 12 and under

So, the next time you think of sledding, remember this wild alternative—shovel racing, where simplicity meets high-speed thrills!

Additional sources:

S

Yukigassen is a Japanese winter sport that combines elements of a snowball fight with team strategy. Played on a snow-covered field, the game involves two teams, each with 7 players (although smaller teams can also play). The goal is to eliminate the opposing team by hitting players with snowballs or capturing their flag. Players are eliminated if they are hit by a snowball or if they break a rule. However, eliminated players can return to the game if their team catches a snowball thrown by the opponent. The game is played in 3-minute rounds, with overtime if needed.

The sport was created in Japan in 1988 and became internationally recognized with the first World Championship held in 1995. Today, it is played in various countries including Finland, the U.S., Canada, and Russia. The Kamuy Warriorsfrom Sapporo are among the most competitive teams. Yukigassen requires agility, aim, and teamwork, with snow barriers used for defense. The largest match ever involved over 400 teams, drawing thousands of spectators.

N

Ice Hockey

Ice Hockey is a winter game played on an ice rink where two teams compete to score goals by hitting rubber discs called pucks into the opponents' goals using hockey sticks. It is a sport that mixes speed and strategy.

Ice hockey emerged in the 19th century, inspired by a stick and ball played on frozen lakes in Canada. Since then, it has become a staple of the Winter Olympics and a popular sport around the world.

Each team has 6 players, a goalkeeper and 5 field players, normally 3 attackers and 2 defenders. Substitutions can be made at any time and without limit. Each player must have a helmet, gloves, shoulder and elbow protections, skates and stick while the goalkeeper must also have more reinforced protections. The rules of ice hockey are basically the same as normal hockey, there are offsides and fouls.

To this day, I haven't had the opportunity to play ice hockey many times, but I highly recommend anyone who has never played ice hockey to at least try it once.

MQC's avatar

Figure Skating

A sport in which individuals or couples skate on ice to the sound of music.

Here in Spain we are also not used to being active participants in winter sports activities, apart from skiing on the slopes in the corresponding mountain resorts, but in the last few years figure skating has gained some relevance, and with it more public awareness.

Equipment:

  • Ice rink

Preferably 60 x 30 metres and never smaller than 56 x 26 metres.

  • Skates

Boot, predominantly leather, with a chrome coated hardened steel blade, attached to the boot by screws.

Elements:

Something that may be unfamiliar to those less familiar with the sport is the existence of established scoring elements such as;

  • Jumps

  • Spins

  • Lifts

  • Turns

  • Steps

  • Moves

The submitted program must comply with a number of mandatory elements set out in the competition.

Scoring:

The judges will decide the participant's score based on 3 components;

  • Composition: evaluates the technical relationship of the program to the music.

  • Presentation: evaluates how the program is performed on an artistic level.

  • Skating skills: evaluates the technical quality of the elements used in the program.

Historic teams:

Typically, the United States and Russia/Soviet Union have had a big presence in the sport at World Championships and Olympic Games level, with countries such as Austria, Canada, the United Kingdom, France and Germany also having big names in the sport. In recent times, Asian countries such as Japan and China are also having quite a few elite athletes, with different medals in different disciplines.

Great athletes:

  • Yuzuru Hanyū

  • Sonja Henie

  • Gillis Grafström

  • Evgeni Plushenko

  • Nathan Chen

  • Dick Button

  • Shoma Uno

  • Charlie White

  • Scott Moir / Tessa Virtue

  • Shen Xue / Zhao Hongbo

  • Jayne Torvill / Christopher Dean

  • Elena Berezhnaya / Anton Sikharulidze

Fun fact:

The kiss and cry is the area in a figure skating rink where figure skaters wait for their marks to be announced after their performances during a figure skating competition. It is so called because skaters and coaches often kiss to celebrate after a good performance, or cry after a bad one.

A

Freestyle skiing is a sport subset of the larger skiing which involves doing stuff that normal people wouldn't do on a normal slope.

I'll focus on the following discliplines:

Half Pipe: skied in the same feature of the Snowboard Halfpipe, the skier jumps off the sides of this cut pipe shape, landing back in and moving to jump off the other side, repeating one side after the other.

Big Air: it's big and in the air, it's all about one single jump and the best trick a skier can do with that jump.

Slopestyle: it's a sloped course where jumps and metal obstacles called rails and boxes, alternates. The goal is to ski the track executing tricks at each feature.

The scoring for three disciplines is centered on how difficult are the tricks, how flawless are they execute and how big those tricks. The FIS, International Ski and Snowboard Federation, standardized the scoring on a 0 to 100 value with a defined set of characteristics for each discipline but other events, like the Winter X-Games, have their own scoring systems that not always align with FIS standards. In every cases, it is in the hands of human judges and human fallability to give an evaluation, as there hadn't been a standardization effort like in figure skating where computers prepare base scores which judges can tweak.

All three disciplines are Olympic sports, with both women and man competing. Big air was introduced in the 2022 Winter Olympics in China, while Slopestyle and Half pipe first appeared at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia.

Aerials, Moguls and Skicross are also considered part of the Freestyle skiing but I choose to not touch them as I don't know them as much as the above three.

Records:

- Highest jump from a quarter pipe: the Simon Dumont record is one that remained in the eyes of everyone who watched the freestyle skiing film Claim in 2008 when he reached more than 10 meters in the air.

- Longest metal rail: in 2022, Swedish Jesper Tjäder managed in a feat of equilibrium to grind a rail of just about 154.49 meter, after an hundred or so attempts that is.

- Bobby Brown is the only skier gaining a perfect score at X-Games with two tricks (switch double Misty mute 1260 and switch double Misty mute 1440) that were the first to be landed during a competition. It happened in 2010.

Cursiosities:

- The cubed half pipe: yes, an half pipe made of cubes, or better, an half pipe cut down in cubes. That's where Simon Dumon shoot another iconic segment with Red Bull.

- You can do freestyle slopestyle and big air in summer as well: there are slopes that use special plastics aided by water to simulate some slopestyle and big air features.

- The sport became an extremely specialized one: who does half pipe is never seen doing big air and slopestyle and viceversa. But it wasn't always like that: in the early 2000s up to 2015s people like Simon Dumon and Jon Olsson competed and won in all three disciplines. The only exception is the Chinese American Eileen Gu which is able to win in all 3 disciplines.

- X-Games is the most famous event in the sport.

- The sport game STEEP features all three disciplines, with plenty of features and parks scattered around the maps. The Olympics DLC let you participate in Slopestyle skiing and half pipe olympic events set at Pyeongchang Winter Olympics of 2018, while the X-Games DLC brings you to the Winter X-Games event.


You can easily find videos of the Quarter pipe and rail record, as well as the cube pipe on Youtube. I didn't include them as the bounty threw up otherwise.

avrona's avatar

In Poland, we go crazy for ski jumping, where it's almost a national sport for us, given for how for most of the 2000s Poland dominated in it. Not so much nowadays, hence why it's dropping in popularity, but still very much enjoyed.

It's fairly simple, a guy slides down and jumps on a snowy ramp and goes flying hundreds of meters away (I have no idea how they have the guts to do that). There's an even more extreme version called sky flying, with even longer ramps, and even more airtime as a result, with the largest recorded jump being a whopping 253 and a half meters.

Even though distance matters a lot, the jump is still scored out of 20 anyway by a panel of judges by the end. If you want to watch it yourself, I have no idea if TV stations air it beyond just the ones of nations that take part (mostly Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, and Japan), but it is in the Winter Olympics, so you can watch it live when that is on.

Y0EMINENCE's avatar

Bobsledding involves teams racing down an icy track in a sled. Here's a quick rundown:

A streamlined vehicle with runners for steering.

2 or 4 athletes; one or two pilots at the front, others push to start.

Teams push the sled from a standing start, then jump in.

Pilots steer through the track using ropes connected to the front runners, navigating curves at high speeds.

Fastest time down the track wins.

Combines speed, gravity, and friction.

Helmets, suits, and sled design are crucial for safety.

Balance between speed at the start and control throughout.

Bobsledding is an Olympic sport, known for its speed and precision.

Includes two-man, two-woman, and four-man (team) bobsled races.

Competitors race on a specially designed, refrigerated track with numerous turns and straightaways.

Teams start by pushing the sled from a standing position for about 50 meters before jumping in.

Once in, the pilot steers using a steering wheel connected to the front runners, aiming for speed and precision through curves.

Gold, silver, and bronze are awarded based on the fastest combined times from multiple heats (usually four).

Strict regulations on sled weight, athlete weight, and equipment to ensure fair competition.

Part of the Winter Olympics since 1924 for men, women's events added in 2002.

Bobsledding highlights speed, teamwork, and the mastery of controlling a high-speed sled on ice.

J

Ice hockey 🏒

This sport is originally from Canada, Here it is played between two teams of 6 players, these players must direct a puck (this one is made of rubber) with a stick, all with the objective of scoring in the rival's goal.

This sport is one of the few that allows unlimited player changes.

The first competition of this sport was on March 6, 1875

Game duration: three 20-minute periods, separated by two 5-minute intervals

Violations:

Offside: Offside occurs when a player from the attacking team enters the attacking zone, crossing the blue line, before the puck.

Penalties: They are known as penalties and are the most serious fouls, which require a penalty from the main referee.

Free kick: It is whistled when an attacking player is alone to shoot at goal and the opponent commits a foul behind him to stop him.

Championships: The main professional ice hockey league in the world is the National Hockey League or NHL. There is also the ice hockey world championship.

Best player: Kevin Fiala (best world player 2024)

Best Team: (I base myself only on this year's championship and one of the best leagues, the NHL) Florida Panthers were the best team, being champions in this

F

Biathlon

What is Biathlon?

Biathlon is a winter Olympic sport in which athletes alternate high-intensity cross-country skiing with target shooting sessions. It is a test of physical endurance, precision and mental control.

Objective

Athletes ski down a cross-country ski course and, at certain points, must stop to shoot at targets with a rifle. Each shooting error results in a penalty, which can be an additional lap or a penalty time.

Necessary Equipment

Cross-country skis: to move quickly on the snow.

Ski poles: to increase speed and stability.

Biathlon rifle: small and lightweight, designed for long-distance accuracy.

Technical clothing: to ensure comfort during physical effort and protection from the cold.

Playing Field

The competition course is a snow-covered circuit of variable length (between 6 and 20 km, depending on the discipline), with shooting stations positioned along the track.

Basic Rules

Cross-Country Skiing:

Athletes must complete a certain number of laps of the cross-country ski course, pushing themselves to the maximum of their ability.

Shooting:

During the race, athletes stop at shooting stations, where they must hit 5 targets placed at:

Lying position: smaller targets, requiring more precision.

Standing position: larger targets, but it is more difficult to maintain stability.

Penalties:

Each missed target results in:

A penalty lap (150 meters) to be skied, or

A penalty of 1 minute, depending on the race.

Score:

The winner is the one who completes the race in the shortest time, including penalties.

Biathlon Variations

Sprint: a short race with 2 shooting stations.

Pursuit: athletes start based on the results of a previous race and try to catch up.

Mass Start: all athletes start together.

Relay: Team races, with 4 members alternating.

What Makes It Special?

Biathlon is unique because it combines two opposing skills: the intense aerobic activity of skiing and the calmness needed to hit targets. Every mistake can change the outcome of the race, making it an exciting sport to play and watch!

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