The Winter Olympics: Ice Dance Like Nobody’s Watching

Life is as awesome and exciting as you make it. Live life like the Winter Olympics, ice dance like nobody’s watching!

We’re a couple weeks into the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, and it’s been more entertaining than I ever thought it’d be. The Winter Olympics is to the Summer Olympics what Doug Pitt is to his brother Brad, or so I thought until this year.

In watching the PyeongChang Olympics, I have come to think that it has a charm and character that’s compelling in its own right.

It’s fun in the way dancing is fun when you think nobody’s watching. The Winter Olympics has and will host some of the strangest and wacky events that only children stuck inside on a rainy day would think of.

If you think I’m guilty of exaggerating, then in my defense I submit to you the double luge.

For background: the single luge (or just luge, as it used to be called) is a sport in which a person lies on their back on a sled and slides down very, very fast down an icy slope – dangerous but a pretty straightforward event.

The double luge takes that concept and literally stacks an entire extra person on top, the visual equivalent of putting two hotdogs in a single bun.

Another example of a unique Winter Olympic sport, one that’s much more known and celebrated, is curling, a sport that combines brooms, rocks, and a kind fierce precision and determination more appropriate in bomb deactivation and disposal squads.

The endgame in curling is to push a smooth granite stone over an ice sheet towards three concentric circles, with the smallest center circle worth the most amount of points.

Still not convinced? Well, I’ve got more examples!

Next up is the biathlon, which asks the question “why shouldn’t I ski with a gun?”

Not to be confused with the triathlon, which is biking, swimming, and running, the biathlon is cross-country skiing with a little bit of rifle shooting added to the mix. I’m sure we’ve yet to see the final form of this sport – maybe they’ll add liquor and blindfolds next.

Finally, we have ice dancing, which is an event that has more in common with ballroom dancing than with traditional figure skating as most people know it. If you’re expecting huge acrobatic jumps and spins, you will be very disappointed. But if you’re looking for an extra slippery electric slide, you’ve found your sport!

I write all this to highlight how wonderful and weird and fun the Winter Olympics are. Life is as awesome and exciting as you make it. Live life like the Winter Olympics, ice dance like nobody’s watching!


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