- The
Winter Olympics are about one thing and one thing only: sliding. - While the Summer Olympics answer practical questions, the winter games celebrate dedication to wonder.
There's a bit of childlike wonder to the Summer Olympics.
Who is the fastest person in the world? Who is the fastest swimmer? Who is the strongest?
These questions are so earnest that they feel drawn from the mind of a curious second grader.
But if the Summer Olympics were borne from the mind of a toddler wondering what it would be like to be the fastest person in the world, the Winter Olympics came to be when that toddler's older sibling interrupted the daydreaming to run into his room on a snow day and ask "You want to slide head-first down the driveway? It's super icy right now."
The Winter Olympics, more than anything, is about sliding
Contrary to its summer counterpart, the Winter Olympics is defined by its environment.
There's not really an event at the summer games contingent on sunshine, but every event at the Winter Olympics is defined by snow or ice and how you slide across it.
More often than not, the events are about sliding dangerously.
Skeleton, luge, and bobsled? Sliding head-first, feet-first, and in a little car with some buddies down an icy track.
Downhill skiing and snowboard cross? Sliding down a steep, snowy mountain as fast as you can on one piece of plastic or two.
Halfpipe and slopestyle? Sliding as fast as you can to hit a jump and flip and twist through the air.
Even the
Sliding is something that we grow up loving. As a child, we celebrated a snow day by finding the biggest hill nearby and climbing to the top. We plopped into our sleds and let gravity take over, reaching speeds unimaginable on a sunny summer day.
As we get older, sliding becomes something to be feared. Every slide comes with a loss of control — a feeling invigorating in youth but daunting in adulthood.
The athletes that compete at the Winter Olympics split the difference of humanity's relationship with sliding.
They embrace the loss of control and then retake it at the last possible second to hit a slalom gate, land a quad, or launch themselves off of a jump. The universe, or more specifically gravity, says that they will go one direction, and in a defiant act of humanity, they embrace the slide and still go another.
The Winter Olympics are human, which makes them different
The standards of the Summer Olympics make sense. At some point in our lives, we run. Many of us swim. Everyone across the globe has attempted to lift something too heavy to lift.
As toddlers, we crawl and cartwheel until we ultimately decide to stick with regular walking rather than developing a gold-medal floor routine.
But for the most part, the core sports of the summer games stem from human labors that were at one point more necessary than they are today. The endurance that is needed to run a marathon. The strength required to lift. The fleet-of-foot needed to jump and climb. The centered mind required to swim. These are skills we picked up over time in keeping with the survival of a species.
Conversely, there is a glorious human joy in the Winter Olympics. There is a frivolity at the core of many events found only at the top of Maslow's pyramid: transcendence.
We will all at some point in our lives need to run, or lift, or possibly swim for a practical reason, but there is no reality where anyone has to launch themselves out of a halfpipe on a snowboard and land a triple corkscrew for any reason other than they wanted to, and thought it would be pretty sick.
There is no natural need to climb to the top of a snowy mountain and ski down.
But there is possibly no feeling more human than looking at the mountain and thinking, "I bet I could slide down that thing pretty freaking fast."
It's an open-ended question that does not need an answer, but at the Winter Olympics, we provide one anyway.
Whereas the Summer Olympics show us which athletes in the world have pushed themselves to the edge of achievements we understand, the Winter Olympics show us the athletes that have dedicated their lives to a pursuit of chaotic speed that is mystifying and unlike anything else in sports.
We all run, throw, and lift. And while we all may look to the top of the mountain and wonder what it would be like to speed down it, not everyone has the chance to follow the pursuit. Even fewer continue asking the question over and over and over: "Can I go faster?"
The only way to find out is to keep sliding.