5 Most Popular Sports at Winter Olympics

The Winter Olympics are an exciting event that takes place every four years. The event includes a wide range of sporting activities from skiing to curling.

With just hours left until the 2022 Winter Olympics, lets take a look at some of the popular sports at the big ticketing event.

The mega-event is slated to take place between February 4 and 20 in Beijing, China.

Let us take a look at the most famous sports over the years at the Winter Olympics

Most Popular Sports at Winter Olympics

#5 Snowboarding: Snowboarding is a competitive sport that involves descending down a snow-covered slope while standing on a snowboard attached to a rider’s feet.

The development of snowboarding was inspired by skateboarding, sledding, surfing, and skiing. It was developed in the United States in 1960s, and became a part of the Winter Olympic program at Nagano in 1998. It was included in the Winter Paralympics at Sochi in 2014.

Since snowboarding's inception as an established winter sport, it has developed various styles, each with its own specialized equipment and technique. The most common styles today are: freeride, freestyle, and freecarve/race. These styles are used for both recreational and professional snowboarding. While each style is unique, there is also some overlap among them.

#4 Luge: Luge is one of the most popular Winter Olympics sports. A luge is the French word for "sledge,". It is a small one or two person sled where the rider will sled face up and feet first. Luger steers using calf muscles to flex the sled's runners. Racing sleds weigh 21–25 kg (46–55 lb) for singles and 25–30 kg (55–66 lb) for doubles.

Georg Hackl of Germany is the most successful Olympic luger, having won five medals, of which three are gold medals attained in three consecutive Olympics.

#3 Short Track Speed Skating: Short track speed skating is one of the three skating disciplines at the Winter Olympics, alongside figure skating and speed skating. However, unlike in speed skating, competitors on short track race against one another, not the clock.

The short-track speed skating was first introduced during the 1992 Winter Games in Albertville, France.

#2 Bobsleigh:

Bobsledding is also called bobsleighing. It is the sport of sliding down an ice-covered natural or artificial incline on a four-runner sled, called a bobsled, bobsleigh, or bob, that carries either two or four people.

The four-man event has been featured since the first Winter Games in 1924 in Chamonix, France. The only exception was the 1960 Games in Squaw Valley when the organizing committee decided not to build a track to reduce costs.

#1 Figure Skating:

Figure skating is a sport in which individuals, duos, or groups perform on figure skates on ice. It was first included in the Olympics, in 1908 while it first got introduced in the Winter Olympics in 2014.

The four Olympic disciplines in figure skating, include freestyle, pairs, ice dance, and synchronized team skating.

The style of competition, as well as the moves and techniques of the skaters, varies for each category. Figure skating has become one of the most popular sports of the Winter Olympics.

Special mention

Freestyle skiing: It is a skiing discipline comprising aerials, moguls, cross, half-pipe, slopestyle and big air as part of the Winter Olympics.

It can consist of a skier performing aerial flips and spins, and can include skiers sliding rails and boxes on their skis. Known as "hot-dogging" in the early 1970s, it is also commonly referred to as freeskiing and jibbing, as well as many other names around the world.

It was first demonstrated in 1988 and has been a part of the Winter Olympics program ever since 1992.