Despite not previously having one single ice chip of interest in winter sports, I have to admit I got a bit emotionally attached to the Winter Olympics. They became a friend to me – a cold, weird friend called Klaus who doesn’t say much and sits in the corner wearing a helmet and neon salopettes.
After a week or so of watching people throw themselves off things and fly through the air with the greatest of ease, l became an expert critic. I loved the ski jumping and Big Air snowboarding events where gravity is just a state of mind and every jump is a fine balance of graceful and suicidal – one wrong move and you’re squished like a mosquito on a windscreen. Despite the fact that I wouldn’t even go to Sainsbury’s if it was icy, I found myself saying things like “they didn’t get enough air” or “that wasn’t good form” about a Finnish freestyle champion who has been skiing since they were an embryo.
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But my heart belongs to the luge and the skeleton. The luge is basically sliding down an icy hill on a tea tray face-up and the skeleton is when you slide down it head first. A thousandth of a second can be the difference between glory and the frozen wastes of defeat, so it’s all surprisingly intense. If you’d told me last month that I would be cheering on Team GB’s Matt Weston and Tabby Stoecker with the frenzied verve of a Dance Mom, I would not have believed you, because I had absolutely no idea who they were.
That’s what’s so wonderful about the Winter Olympics, though. They’re a steep learning curve, literally. Did you know that there’s a skiier called Mac Forehand? Do you know what a tail butter is? Or a goofy stance? Or gate compensation? Neither did I! I actually still don’t, but please keep that under your ski hat.
It was also a very reassuring reminder that even while the world is churning out its daily horrors, there are always snowboarders training in Japan, Italian curling teams sweeping the ice and Canadian figure skaters perfecting their triple axels. They turn up every day to freezing cold ice rinks and ski slopes and work their thermal socks off to do niche, mad, dangerous things that they’ve dedicated their lives to, because they love it. They love it so much that two big curlers will even have a brawl on the ice over someone double tapping a stone.
