What I learned watching every sport at the Winter Olympics

What I learned watching every sport at the Winter Olympics

toggle caption Gabriel Bouys/AFP via Getty Images

Let us say up front that watching some of every sport at the Winter Olympics is not as challenging as watching some of every sport at the Summer Olympics. The Summer Olympics are a sprawling collection of activities, where you might see horses or swords or boats or surfboards.

The Winter Olympics still feel very rich, but they're a bit more focused. My own brain roughly sorts them into team sports like curling and hockey, figure skating, running on snow, going down a hill on snow, sliding down an icy track, and flying through the air in much the way I might if I went skiing or snowboarding, except it's graceful and on purpose, and you generally do not end up in the hospital.

And I found it all completely captivating.

toggle caption Alexis Boichard/Agence Zoom/Getty Images

Alpine skiing: One of my limitations as a watcher of downhill skiing is that most of the runs look similar to me unless someone crashes or unexpectedly departs the course. You could show me ten skiers going down a mountain, and without their times showing up in green or red, I would have no idea which ones were good or which ones were bad. I would simply say, "Great job getting to the bottom very quickly." And yet, through the fantabulous deployment of technique, you can earn edging someone out by a tenth of a second. A tenth of a second! Or less!

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The slalom events are delightful, because they progress from slalom ... to giant slalom ... to Super G, which is super giant slalom. There is only one way for this to go, as we all know, and that is in the direction of mega super giant slalom, or M-S-G (which makes all other skiing more appealing because it adds umami flavor).