Untitled

Press, 10 February 1988, Page 45

An explanation and some of the history of the 10 official Winter Olympic sports, a few of which are a little obscure.

Alpine ski ing Venue: Nakiska at Mount Allan, 50min west of Calgary in Kananaskis Country. New ski area which opened to the public in the 1986-87 season. Alpine ski-ing has been part of the Winter Olympic Games since 1936 when the original events, downhill and slalom, were raced at Garmisch-Par-tenkirchen in Germany. The Olympic programme now also includes giant slalom and two new events, super giant slalom and an alpine combination in which separate downhill and slalom competitions are held. Modern ski-racing began in 1911 when an Englishman named Lord Roberts of Kandahar organised some sportsmen to race down a mountain in Crans-Montana, Switzerland. Downhill remains an exciting event and potentially the most dangerous with racers averaging more than lOOkm/h on steep, often icy courses around 3km long. Mistakes can lead to spectacular end-over-end tumbles that are the delight of television cameramen. Because of the wider range of ability at the Winter Olympics as opposed to the World Cup circuit the courses for Olympic downhills are not usually quite so frightening. The men’s downhill has a minimum vertical drop of 800 metres (at Nakiska it will be 854 m) and for that to be achieved at Sarajevo in Yugoslavia four years ago the course started on top of a four-storey restaurant.

Downhill racers plunge down the mountain on

skis about 225 cm long and wear aerodynamic, skintight suits. Their ski poles are bent in a special shallow “S” shape so as to be accommodated during their tuck or crouch. Helmets are mandatory. Super giant slalom or super-G has only been around the international ski-racing circuit for the last few years. The event is said to combine the speed of downhill (helmets are again obligatory) with the aggression of slalom and is noted for its long, sweeping, high-speed turns. Like downhill, it is a one-run event. Giant slalom is regarded along with slalom as a more technical skiing discipline than downhill. It is a large-scale slalom event down a vertical drop of up to 400 m (men) and 350 m (women) and skiers must pass through at least 30 control gates.

In slalom, courses are set in such a way that skiers are obliged to take a more direct line down the hill. At least a quarter of each course must be on slopes exceeding a gradient of 30deg. In recent years the introduction of “rapid” gates has meant slalom racers donning special gloves to push aside the spring-loaded poles.

Venue: Canmore Nordic Centre, 55min west of Calgary. Includes 56km of trails and a 32-target biathlon shooting range.

This combines the sports of cross-country ski-ing with rifle shooting

in a supreme test of the athletes — both physical and mental. The biathletes must these days ski short loops on prepared cross-country trails, returning to the range to shoot each time. In the ski-ing the body is pushed to the limit; the switch to shooting requires lowering of the heatbeat and total concentration. The shooting sessions, each of five rounds, alternate between the prone and standing positions, the targets being 50m away.

A masochistic element is introduced in the relay races and the 10km sprint event. For each target missed biathletes must ski a 150 m penalty loop laid out on even ground near the shooting range. In the 20km individual competition there is a one minute penalty for each target missed. Biathlon was included in the very first Winter Olympics at Chamonix, France, in 1924 and was then known as military patrol.

Venue: Canada Olympic Park, 15min from downtown Calgary on the Trans-Canada Highway. Includes Canada’s first bobsleigh and luge track. Bobsleighs have been in existence as a form of transport for centuries and eskimos first harnessed dog teams to long sleds on hunting expeditions over the vast ice of the Canadian North.

As a sport bobsledding began in the Alps and low mountain ranges of

Europe in the late 1800 s, the British being the first to race hand sleds — at Davos, in Switzerland in 1879.

The four-man bobsled was introduced as a sport at the first Winter Games in Chamonix, France, in 1924 with the two-man bob coming in eight years later at Lake Placid, New York.

It will only take the sleds about 60s to get down the Calgary track, but not too many spectators or television viewers will be volunteering to swap places with the crewmen for the ride. The artificially refrigerated concrete track drops 118.2 metres down the park’s slopes, speeds upwards of 125km/h are reached and forces of 4.5 Gs are exerted on the curves. There are eight banked curves left and six to the right.

Standard dress includes crash helmets, goggles, knee, elbow and shoulder pads, tight stretch suits, gloves and special shoes with steel spikes. Each sled is made of steel and fibreglass with the streamlining of an Indianapolis racing car — the metal runners apart. The combined weight of a sled and four-man team must not exceed 630 kg. From a standing start a four-man bob team can accelerate the sled to close to 60km/h. Hence the need for athletes who can run and push at the same time.

The whole team rocks the sleigh in unison and then explosively pushes off. The two crewmen help push off and act as ballast during the race; the driver jumps in first when the sleigh starts to move faster than those pushing it; the brakeman is the last to jump in, during the race he shifts his weight according to the angle of the curves and corners and he applies the brakes only at

the end of the race. Teams compete in four heats over two days with the lowest combined aggregate time winning.

Venue: Canmore Nordic Centre. Cross-country ski-ing or nordic ski-ing was introduced in Canada by immigrants from Norway and Sweden and the first North American skiers were probably Scandinavian prospectors and miners taking part in the 1849 gold rush. They used wooden “gliding shoes” more than three metres long. Nordic ski-ing has been part of the Olympics from the start with cross-coun-try contestants racing over both 18km and 50km at Chamonix in 1924. Over the last few years the old diagonal stride has started to become superceded by a racing technique called ski-skating which caused a furore in the competitive crosscountry ski-ing world. The sport involves fast ski-ing over difficult terrain and thus makes great demands both on the heart and the lungs. Cross-country skiers compete over a variety of distances through hilly, wooded terrain. At Canmore the men will race over 15km, 30km and 50km and the women over skm, 10km and 20km. It is possible to reach speeds of 80km/h on downhill sections and' racers can average 24km/ h over a 15km course.

Venues: Olympic Saddledome, Stampede Corral, Father David Bauer Olympic Arena, all in Calgary. Seating capacity, 17,000, 7600 and 1750 respectively.

One of the lesser-known facts about figure skating is that it was an Olympic sport before there were Olympic Winter Games. At the London Olympics in 1908 skaters competed in two disciplines; there was individual skating for men and women and pairs skating. A third discipline, ice dancing, was added for the Winter Games at Innsbruck in 1976 and has been included ever since. There were those that argued that ice dancing should not be an Olympic sport, but what would have been the Sarajevo Games without the magic of Torvill and Dean doing Ravel’s “Bolero.”

In the singles event skaters compete in three categories — compulsory figures, short programme and long programme or free skating. In pairs skating the compulsory figures are dropped. In ice dancing, as opposed to pairs, no jumps, spins or lifts above the shoulder are allowed.

Venues: Olympic Saddledome, Stampede Corral, Father David Bauer. Some form of ice

hockey is believed to have been played by native North Americans before the arrival of Christopher Columbus while some stick and ball games were probably played on ice in Northern England. The first game of modern ice hockey, with a ball substituted for a flat wooden disc or puck, was played at the Victoria Rink in Montreal in 1875. Ice hockey became Canada’s national sport and all the games are expected to be feverishly followed by the public. The sport made its first appearance in the Olympics at the Ice Palace in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1920 four years before the first Winter Games. It should be obvious that the aim of ice hockey is to deposit the puck in the opposing team’s net. An Olympic hockey team consists of 20 players, including two goaltenders, though no more than six team members may be on the ice when play is in progress.

The players’ protective equipment includes gloves, helmet and pads. So involved is the sport that eight officials are required to run a game — one referee, two linesmen, two goal judges, a penalty timekeeper, an official scorer and a game timekeeper. The Olympic surface. measures 60m by 30m and a game consists of three 20min periods.

Venue: Canada Olympic Park. As “Time” magazine said in its preview of the Sarajevo Winter Games, the luge is not a museum in Paris. But it is certainly one of the more obscure sports on the Olympic programme.

It is regarded as more

dangerous than either the downhill ski-race or the bobsled. Sliders ride on their backs, feet first, with only a small platform on runners beneath them. They plunge down a 1600 m long iced track at speeds of up to 120km/h and steer by subtle shifts in body pressure. One luger has compared it to “riding on a bar of soap.” Luge is a name derived from the French word for sled. Organised competitions began in the alpine countries of Europe where winding mountain roads provided good “naturbahn” or natural race tracks. It first became a Winter Olympic sport at Innsbruck, Austria, in 1964. Another 12 years passed before a 213 m luge run was built in Ontario. Now the sport is catching on and there are more than a dozen naturbahn packed snow tracks in Alberta.

While the bobsleigh is restricted to men’s teams both male athletes (singles and doubles) and female athletes (singles) will contest the luge at Calgary.

Three New Zealand lugers, all based in Calgary, were nominated for these Games but they failed to find favour with the Olympic selectors.

Venues: Canada Olympic Park, Canmore Nordic Centre.

This event combines a 70-metre ski-jumping competition one day with a 15km cross-country skiing race the next day. Each competitor has three jumps and is awarded style and distance points for each jump, the two highest jump scores being added to give the final score. Start positions for the cross-country race are determined by the results of the jumping event and

the seeding system thereby makes for an exciting finish to the nordic combined. The first skier to cross the finish line is declared the winner.

At Calgary there will be a new event on the programme, a nordic combined team competition with a 70m ski jump one day and a 3 x 10km relay the next.

Venue: Canada Olympic Park. Standing capacity 50,000. The 90m tower is the highest structure in Calgary. Ski jumpers have longer, wider skis than their ski-racing cousins and wearing leather boots attached at the toe they leap vast distances (110 m or so) off awesome ramps.

The sport began in Scandinavia, the first ski jumping contest being held in Norway in 1862. It became very, popular in Canada by the turn of the century and in 1921, in Calgary, a 60m ski jump was erected on the roof of the exhibition grandstand at Stampede Park. Ski jumping became an Olympic event at the first Winter Games in 1924 and the present 70m and 90m events have been standard since 1964. In ski jumping competitors start their in-run in a relaxed crouch, and bend forward after the take-off in an airfoil position with the body curved parallel with the skis during the flight. For the landing the telemark position is adopted with knees and hips bent and arms spread for balance. Half the points are awarded for the distance jumped and the other half for style, form and landing.

Speed skating

Venue: Olympic Oval, University of Calgary. Capacity for 4000 spectators. Iron skate blades have been around for more than four centuries, since 1572 when they took over from wooden ones. Before that bone had been used, skating beginning some time in the Dark Ages when people in Northern Europe used the polished shank or rib of an animal on which to glide across the ice.

The sport has been part of the Winter Olympics from the outset with speed skating races at the Chamonix Games in 1924. These Games are special as the events are being held in the world’s first fully enclosed 400 m Olympic speed skating oval. The oval covers an area of 26,000 sq m, stands 20m above the ground and is roughly the length of two “football” fields.

Skaters will compete in pairs on the 400 m oval track, skating counter clockwise and changing lanes once every lap. In sprint races they reach speeds of more than 48km/h, the key being applying the maximum force to the ice with the minimum friction. Speed skates have much longer blades (42.5 cm extending in front arid behind) than regular skates. Speed skating distances for men are 500 m, MOOm, 1500 m, 5000 m and 10,000 m.

As usual the women will compete over 500 m, I‘OOOm, 1500 m and 3000 m and at Calgary, for the first time, will skate a 5000 m race as well.