Post date: Feb 5, 2018 1:28:32 PM
Compared to the Summer Olympics, the Winter Olympics has always seemed to host a number of uninspiring events. However, the PyeongChang Olympic Games look to change that with the addition of four new events: Alpine Skiing Team Events, Big Air Snowboarding, Mass Start Speed Skating, and Curling Mixed Doubles.
Announced back in 2015, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said the four sports held, “added value; youth appeal; attractiveness for TV, media, and the general public,” according to Sports Illustrated.
Both Big Air Snowboarding and Alpine Skiing Team Events are sure to deliver on this promise.
Heralded as the X Games of the Olympics, athletes competing in Big Air Snowboarding will have to slide down a160 foot ramp, with a 40-degree slope, to show off their best aerial tricks.
As with other snowboarding events, American athletes, including Ryan Strassel and Hailey Langland, are expected to excel in the Big Air Snowboarding.
Elsewhere on the slopes, athletes from different countries will be pitted against each other in the Alpine Skiing Team Events. In this head-to-head battle, athletes will speed down two identical slaloms, with the first to reach the bottom earning their team one point. Teams will consist of two men and two women.
Another high intensity sport, Mass Start Speed Skating, also promises to be a crowd pleaser. Often called NASCAR on ice, this event involves 24 skaters—over 3 times as many athletes as in a traditional short track race—starting a 16 lap race at the same time.
In addition to creating renewed appeal for the Olympics, these new events, which are all mixed gender, will allow for a record number of female events and a record number of female athletes to compete in the games.
According to olympic.org, this is an effort by the Olympic Agenda 2020 to “create more flexibility in the program of the Olympic Games.”
The effects of the Olympic Agenda 2020 will also be seen in the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics with the addition of karate, sports climbing, surfing softball and baseball, and skateboarding to the event roster.
-Michael Bachmann '20