Winter Olympic events (ice hockey,luge,Nordic combined)

Ice hockey

Luge

Luge is the French word for sled. It is a sport where a single person or a pair of racers slides feet first down a twisty ice track on their sled. To do the luge, you need a certain amount of equipment. One piece is a sled. It is made to look and act like a car. It can go almost as fast as one too, it can go up to 90 mph! But it cannot weight more than 50 lbs. The rider steers the sled by putting pressure on the runners with their legs. It rides on two steel runners. The steels are attached to kufens which are flexible levers that respond to the pressure from a rider's leg movements. Bridges, made of steel, connect the two kufens. There are two bridges on each sled, one in the front and one in the back. The slider/sliders sit in pods, which are fiberglass bodies of the sled. Another important piece of equipment is the uniform. Everything that a rider wears is designed to help with speed. Racers wear suits specifically made to be sleek and fast. Even their feet are covered with luge booties. These booties are designed to point to help increase aerodynamics. The gloves they wear are spiked at the end because the lugers use their hands almost like paddles to get the fastest start.

There are three events, men's singles, women's singles, and doubles. In singles the racers get four runs down the track over a two day period. Their times are added up and the luger with the fastest time wins! In doubles the racers make two runs in a single day the scores are added together and the fastest time wins!






Nordic combined

Nordic combined is a combination of a cross country event and a ski jumping event. This event includes two jumps off one of the hills and one cross country race. The distance traveled in the two jumps is added together. The skier with farthest distance in the two jumps starts first on the second day in the cross country portion of the race. The other racers follow, depending on how far they jumped. The first person to cross the finish line wins. There are individual events and team events.