Winter Olympic sports

Overview

The Winter Olympic Games is a series of competitive events in which thousands of athletes from all over the world take part. Since it was introduced at Chamonix, France, in 1924, the Winter Olympics became a major international sporting affair, involving nearly one hundred different events. Occurring every four years, the Winter Olympics feature sports such as skating, skiing, ice hockey, and curling, among others. Sochi, Russia, hosted the events in 2014; the 2018 Games took place in Pyeongchang, South Korea; and the 2022 Games were held in Beijing, China. In 2019, the location of the 2026 Winter Games was announced; the Games were scheduled to be held in two locations in ItalyMilan and Cortina.  

Like its summer counterpart, the Winter Olympics are not simply a sporting event. They cast an international spotlight on the city where it takes place. The host city, as well as the mountain regions at which the alpine events occur, frequently undergo a dramatic transformation during the period leading up to the Games, as existing structures are renovated and new facilities are constructed to accommodate the athletes and the events themselves. In many cases, the host city—even those areas not directly utilized by the Games’ participants—were also changed to meet the demands of the major influx of visitors, press, and political representatives. The new or renovated sports complexes, housing units, transportation systems, infrastructural improvements, and other Olympics-related construction projects were seen as long-term boons for the city that hosts the Games. In light of these potential benefits, the process by which cities were selected to host the Winter Olympic Games were intensive and politically charged. 

The Winter Olympics also gives a unique stage upon which the world’s greatest winter athletes—regardless of the economic and political stature of their respective countries—can compete on equal ground. To be sure, there are often overarching political, social, and economic issues that manifest during these events—whether these center on the host nations or the athletes themselves. In some ways, therefore, the Winter Olympics present an opportunity for renewed activism, either by external parties or by the athletes. 

Origins and History

In general, the Winter Olympics owes its history to the Olympic Games in ancient Greece. Those games were first introduced in the eighth century BCE, when Greeks began performing sporting events on the plains of Olympia on the western peninsula. These games were presented in homage to the gods in general, and Zeus in particular. Ancient Greeks continued the practice until the fourth century CE, when Christian emperor Theodosius banned the games because of their perceived connection to the “pagan” practice of worshipping Zeus. 

In the late nineteenth century, Frenchman Pierre de Coubertin launched a campaign to reintroduce the Olympics to the world. Coubertin, who had participated in a number of amateur sports during his life, felt that amateur athletics was sport in its purest form. In the 1890s, he began promoting amateur athletics all over the world. In 1894, Coubertin attended a conference at the Sorbonne, in Paris, at which he successfully generated global interest in reviving the ancient Greek Olympics. Two years later, with the help of Greek industrialist George Averoff, Coubertin’s dream became a reality, as the Olympics returned to Athens. 

The success of the 1896 Summer Games led advocates to advance a winter version of the Olympics. In 1901, the nations of Scandinavia created the Nordic Games, the first international winter competition, but limited to Scandinavian teams only. In 1911, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), taking note of the success of the Nordic Games—and having introduced figure skating at the Summer Olympics program to positive fan response—proposed a separate Winter Olympics program. However, Scandinavia’s desire to protect the Nordic Games, coupled with World War I, kept the Winter Olympics on the drawing board. In the interim, however, the IOC introduced ice hockey to the 1920 Antwerp Summer Games—once again, this typically winter sport received a favorable response from the fans. 

In the mid-1920s, the success of ice skating and ice hockey in the Summer Olympics led to renewed push for a separate version of the Olympics that would focus on winter sports. Scandinavia’s reluctance had lessened, particularly in light of the potential benefits of a successful event, which would give those nations the opportunity to showcase their winter athletes on a much bigger stage. In light of Scandinavia’s opposition to an official winter Olympic event, the IOC presented a “Winter Sports Week,” in 1924, in the Chamonix Mont Blanc region of the French Alps, where more than 250 athletes competed in sixteen events before more than ten thousand fans at Chamonix. The success of that event led the IOC to formally launch the Winter Olympics shortly thereafter. The Winter Sports Week was then retroactively declared the first Winter Games in Olympic history. 

Sports

The Winter Olympic Games encompass a wide range of winter sporting events. The IOC designate its events in three categories. As delineated in the IOC’s charter, the first of these are “sports”—athletic competition that were governed by an international federation, such as the World Curling Federation. Sports are in turn broken into “disciplines”—types of athletics bearing common themes. For example, short-track speed skating and ice skating are both identified as disciplines of the sport of skating. Finally, the IOC recognize the events themselves, including the mixed ice dancing, men’s 10,000-meter (m), and the women’s team pursuit. It is during these events that the bronze, silver, and gold medals are distributed for top finishers. 

The Winter Olympics are traditionally much smaller in terms of the number of events than its summer counterpart. Sports and events have been added and subtracted over the course of the history of the Winter Olympics. For example, the 2014 Sochi Games featured twelve new events, including slopestyle and women’s ski jumping. Added to the list of events for the 2018 Pyeongchang Games were big air snowboarding, team alpine skiing, mass start speed skating, and mixed doubles curling. In 2022 at the Beijing Games, new events included women's monobob, men's and women's big air freestyle skiing, and several new mixed team events which were added to increase gender equity by allowing men and women to compete in competitions together. Within this framework, the Winter Olympics, as presented at the 2022 Beijing Games, involved seven distinct sports. The following list describes the sports featured during the Winter Olympics in more detail:

Biathlon: In the Olympic biathlon, competitors covered various distances, between 6 and 20 kilometers (km), on skis while occasionally stopping to fire a rifle at differently sized targets. There are eleven biathlon events, which are available for both male and female competitors: men’s 20 km individual, men’s 10 km sprint, men’s 12.5 km pursuit, men’s mass start 15 km, men’s 4 x 7.5 km relay, women’s 15 km individual, women’s 7.5 km sprint, women’s 10 km pursuit, women’s 12.5 km mass start, women’s 4 x 6 km relay, and the mixed 4 x 6 km relay. 

Bobsleigh: Bobsleigh (or “bobsled”) involves a two- or four-person team using a special sleigh and traveling downhill on a partially enclosed, ice-covered track. This sport’s events were the men’s four-man, the men’s two-man, the women’s two-woman, and the women's monobob. Bobsled also featured the “bobsleigh skeleton” for men and women; in this discipline, one competitor used a small sled, ran about 40 meters up to the starting line, and jumped on the sled, traveling headfirst down the course. 

Curling: Curling is a team sport that takes place on a specially designed ice field. At one end of the long, rectangular fieldknown as the “sheet”s a group of four concentric circles called the "house." Teams of four push granite “stones” toward the house, looking to place their stones closest to the center of the rings. One team member launch the stone, two members use brooms to clear the ice and guide the stone, and the leader, called the skip, strategizes the course the other players must pursue. Men’s and women’s curling are both played in a tournament format. 

Ice Hockey: Until 1998, Olympic ice hockey—played in tournament style for both men and women—feature only amateur players. For the Nagano Games, however, professionals from the National Hockey League and elsewhere were allowed to represent their respective countries at the Games. The Nagano Games were also the first to feature the women’s event. 

Ice Skating: The sport of ice skating encompass three disciplinesfigure skating, short-track speed skating, and speed skating. The events within these disciplines take place on an enclosed arena or specially designed ice track. 

• Figure Skating: A combination of skill, coordination, and artistry, figure skating is one of the original Winter Olympic sports. In some ways, the events overlap in terms of the performances, but for the most part, they are distinct. For example, pairs and single skating focus on acrobatic throws and jumps, while ice dancing focus on the skaters’ footwork and synchronization as a pair. The events within the sport of ice skating are men’s singles skating, women’s singles skating, pairs skating, ice dancing, and team skating. The latter of these events feature one sport pair and one dance pair, and one male and one female singles skater compete as a team on behalf of the nation they represent. 
• Short-Track Speed Skating: This form of speed skating takes place on a 111.12 meter oval track. Because the short track requires athletes to make tighter turns than in long-track speed skating, there is an increased risk of colliding with the padded walls that surround the track. The events within this Olympic discipline are the 500, 1,000, and 1,500 meter races for both men and women, as wells as the women’s 3,000-meter relay, and the men’s 5,000 meter relay. 
• Speed Skating: This discipline refers to long-track skating, where pairs of athletes compete on a 400 meter track. Athlete pairings are drawn the night before the race. After each race, athletes are awarded points according to a formula called the Sammelagt Point System, which was derived based on the time they took to complete the race distance—the gold medal goes to the athlete with the fewest points. The events in this discipline are: the 500, 1,000, 1,500, 5,000, and 10,000 meter and eight-lap team pursuit and mass start for men, and the 500, 1,000, 1,500, 3,000, and 5,000, meter and six-lap team pursuit and mass start for women. 

Luge: The luge resembles the skeleton bobsled, but the event is different in many ways. In luge, the athlete sit on the sled and pulled themselves over the starting line, as opposed to running the sled to the line, leaning back and traveling down the course while on his or her back. The luge events are men’s and women’s singles, doubles—which did not require a same-sex pair, though men traditionally race together—and the team relay. 

Skiing: There are six distinct disciplines within the sport of skiing: alpine, cross-country, freestyle, Nordic combined, ski jumping, and snowboarding. 

• Alpine Skiing: Alpine skiing is a test of speed and handling, with both a slalom and a downhill component that has to be tackled either individually or jointly, depending on the event. The events in Alpine skiing for both men and women are the downhill, slalom, giant slalom, super giant (super-G), and alpine combined. In the mixed team parallel slalom, two teams of four—two women and two men per team—race against each other in side-by-side slalom courses.  
• Cross-Country Skiing: Cross-country skiingwhich requires a longer ski than the downhill skis considered the oldest type of skiing. This discipline entails various distances and styles. The Olympic events in this sport are: the 15 km classic, skiathlon, sprint, 50 km mass start, team sprint, and 4 x 10 km relay for men, and the 10 km classic, 7.5 km skiathlon, sprint, 30 km mass start, team sprint, and 4 x 5 km relay for women. 
• Freestyle Skiing: There are thirteen men’s and women’s freestyle skiing events, all of which require a high degree of acrobatic and technical skill. The events in this discipline were the moguls, aerials, ski cross, halfpipe, slopestyle, and big air. The mixed team aerials consisted of three-person teams of mixed genders that competed together. 
• Nordic Combined Skiing: Only for male competitors, the Nordic combined event involves a ski jump on either the normal or the large hill followed by a cross-country race. The three events in this discipline are the individual normal hill/10 km, the individual large hill 10 km, and the team large hill 4 x 5 km. 
• Ski Jumping: There are five events within the discipline of ski jumping, where competitors jump from hills of varying size, trying to remain airborne for the greatest distance: the men’s and women’s normal hill, in which the longest distance reached was usually about 105 m, and the men’s large hill, in which the longest distance reached was about 140 m. There is also a men’s team event on the large hill and a mixed team event. The 2014 Sochi Games marked the first time that women competed in Olympic ski jumping. 
• Snowboarding: Because of its high level of popularity, snowboarding was added to the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics. This discipline features eleven events: the parallel giant slalom, big air, snowboard cross, halfpipe, and slopestyle, each of which has a men’s and a women’s division. There is also a mixed team snowboard cross, in which four men race at the same time, followed by four women who receive time advantages based on the men's scores. 

The Games in the Twenty-First Century

In 2019, the International Olympics Committee (IOC) announced the 2026 Winter Olympics Games were awarded to the bid from Italy. The cities of Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo would jointly host the events. Italy was selected over the candidacy of Sweden. This would mark the fourth set of Olympic Games to be held in Italy. The others were in 1956 in Corntina d’Ampezzo, 1960 in Rome, and 2006 in Turin. Cortina d’Ampezzo, incidentally, had been chosen as the site for the 1946 Winter Games, an event that was cancelled because of World War II.

For the 2026 Winter Olympic Games in Italy, eight new events were expected to be added, and the withdrawal of the Alpine ski team event was also expected. The new competitions in 2026 were: dual moguls in men's and women's freestyle skiing, men's and women's double luge, a mixed-gender skeleton team event, and a women’s large hill event in ski jumping comparable to the men’s individual ski jumping program. 

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