The Winter Olympics are back, and once again, I am ready to care immensely about niche sports that I would otherwise have no idea even existed.
Once every four years, February rolls around, and I’m suddenly overwhelmed with a deep, near-fanatic passion for curling, luge, speedskating, and the one where people ski and then shoot and then ski some more, which I’ve always felt should also include a portion where they drag a dead moose to truly simulate the snowy frontier experience the sport clearly originated from.
For two and a half weeks, I transform into a scholar of luge aerodynamics and an amateur historian of Nordic skiing, even though I’ve seen snow in person twice for about three hours total.
I don’t follow the World Cup circuit. I didn’t even know there was one that led up to the summer and winter Olympics until a few days ago. Did you know there was a Luge World Cup, and that it happened only a couple of months ago in Winterberg, Germany? I don’t think I’ve ever once been aware of when and how any of the Olympians qualify for these events. I would believe they all arrived there at the same time, entirely by sheer coincidence, if you told me that with enough confidence.
And yet, when the Olympic rings appear, I lock in, Olympic events becoming the foreground and background noise of my life.
Take luge. There is no rational reason I should be this invested in watching someone lie flat on a cafeteria tray outfitted with oversized skate blades rocket down an ice chute at speeds that can get you a hefty ticket in a school zone. But the moment NBC puts up a graphic explaining that one hundredth of a second separates gold from obscurity, and I’m watching as if I have a family member in the competition.
Curling is the often maligned, oft mocked Olympic sport that seemed like it was the byproduct of an argument over household chores. I don’t think I’ve ever once watched a match from beginning to end, and I’ve never understood the strategy beyond sweeping aggressively, which I fundamentally understand as my home’s designated cleaner who sees a bit of myself in every Olympian every time I’m scraping a smudge off the kitchen floor with a mop. I’m not even sure how the scoring system works, yet I find myself rapt when it airs.
I’m watching the men’s 10,000-meter speedskating competition as I write this. As a kid who grew up at roller rinks, wishing I could Thanos snap half these uncoordinated skaters so I could circle the rink endlessly at top speed with no child-sized obstructions in my way, I wonder if I would be competing alongside them if I had been raised in a colder climate.
I’ve never understood figure skating’s appeal, but I respect the artistry. I think it’s the artistry that has kept me from fully buying in. In a sport like, say, luge, there is a stone-cold, inarguable numerical metric that separates winners from losers. In figure skating, it’s all vibes. Yes, technical skill, execution, and degree of difficulty are all scoring factors, but it ultimately comes down to opinions. For this reason, I believe there should be catty anonymous-quote-filled articles where figure skating judges unleash their worst takes and reveal their incredibly stupid biases the way The Hollywood Reporter gets anonymous Oscar voters to divulge how incredibly stupid and petty they are.
And of course, there is hockey. I’m a lifelong fan, it’s the one winter sport I follow outside of my two-and-a-half-week Olympic fugue state. While NHL playoff hockey is not just some of the best hockey you’ll ever see, but it might be the absolute peak of professional sports excitement, Olympic hockey is up there. As with Olympic basketball, where lowly third-string NBA players suddenly become the Michael Jordans of their nations, national pride takes over, and guys who could barely get ice time on a professional level are suddenly making a mockery of dream teams. I don’t have a joke for this one. It’s just a joy and a thrill to watch.
I love these sports precisely because they are fleeting. I have other interests, other responsibilities in life. I don’t have the time to be as invested in any more sports than I already am. But I do love that both the winter and summer Olympics offer me an Applebee’s-style appetizer sampler platter of sports that I can nibble from here and there, raving about or critiquing at my leisure, before they disappear into their respective subculture rabbit holes, always there waiting for me to travel down them if I’m ever struck with the desire, as I was in my recent article about how people even get into luge in the first place.
For a brief, frigid window, I care deeply about skeleton, biathlon, and a broom’s ability to reduce ice friction. Then the flame, both literal and figurative, goes out, and I move on, and that’s okay, because I know all the niche Winter Olympics events will be back in 2030, and the fun, obscure summer ones will be back even sooner in 2028.
The post Winter Olympics 2026 Are Here to Activate My Deep Hidden Love for Niche Sports appeared first on VICE.
