Beyond Ice Hockey and Figure Skating: The Most Unusual Olympic Sports of the Winter Games

 

As athletes from around the globe head to PyeongChang, South Korea, for the 2018 Winter Olympics, the world will be watching as they perform superhuman feats. And we will be riveted. Through the years, some more obscure sports have shared the Olympic spotlight. From Skeleton to Bandy, here are the most unusual Olympic sports of the winter games.

Skeleton

Athletes participating in the Skeleton dive into their sport—literally. Skeleton is like sledding, but to the extreme. Athletes sprint 40 meters down the track, dive headfirst onto sleds, and race facedown around an ice track at speeds reaching 90 miles an hour. With no steering mechanism, athletes maneuver banking curves by shifting their bodies. Debuting in 1928, Skeleton disappeared for several years, but re-emerged in Salt Lake City at the 2002 Games with both men and women’s events. Skeleton will be featured the second week of the PyeongChang games.

Curling

Think of shuffleboard played with a broom on a court of ice, and you’ll have a sense of curling, one of the oddest—and increasingly popular—events of the Winter Olympics. Introduced in 1924 and established as an official competitive Olympic sport in 1998, curling consists of two teams (or “rinks”) of four players. The objective of the game is for the teams to slide 40-pound granite rocks (or “stones”) down the ice toward a target at the other end of the rink, each trying to get the rocks closer to the center (or “button”) of its target than their opponents.  In 2018, an additional third event—mixed doubles curling—will be one of the newest entries in the Winter Olympics lineup.

Skijoring

Athletes strap on skis and are pulled at rapid speed over frozen terrain by horses, dogs, ponies, or snowmobiles. The racer may be towed around a flat oval track, through an obstacle course, or in a variety of precision-based events. This is skijoring—possibly the most dangerous sport ever presented at the Olympics. Created in Norway and Sweden, skijoring only appeared once in the Winter Olympic Games as a demonstration sport, in 1928.

Military Patrol

Originally a competition between military units, military patrol was only competed once at the Winter Olympics, in 1924, though it did appear as a demonstration sport in other years. A mash-up of rifle shooting, ski mountaineering, and cross-country skiing, military patrol was the forerunner of the modern-day biathlon.

Bandy

Based on the number of participants, bandy is the second most popular winter sport in the world (following ice hockey). Yet bandy made just one appearance at the Olympic Games, as a demonstration sport in 1952. Bandy is similar to ice hockey, with a ball used instead of a puck. Teams of eleven skaters compete to send the ball across a football field-sized ice arena and into the opponent’s goal.

 While some of these offbeat sports continue to be featured at the Winter Games, others have been lost to history. You can be sure, though, that these unusual Olympic sports of the winter games won’t be the last; there’s no telling what the future games hold.

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