EXTREME SPORTS ACTION COMING SOON!
The Vancouver Winter Olympic Games will feature some of the world’s fastest and most extreme sports and a team of young New Zealand athletes will be there. New Zealand will name its team in late January and until then the best of our winter sports starts are forgoing a Kiwi summer for intense training and competition in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s a tough road but one that holds promise of the ultimate reward – representing New Zealand at an Olympic Games.
We’re likely to have a Kiwi line-up in eight of the disciplines on the schedule at Vancouver and they’re sports that are an adrenaline junkie’s dream. SKYSport and Prime will be bringing you more than 900 hours of fast-paced winter action. Here are some of the sports to keep an eye on this February.
SKIER CROSS
Described as the motocross of skiing, skier cross is a mad-cap downhill race with jumps, bends, rolls, ridges – and crashes! The course is designed to test the athlete’s skill and endurance and Mitchey Greig from Queenstown looks like she’ll be right there with the best of them. Each start comprises four skiers, the best two then progress to the next round. Biathlon Sarah Murphy describes Biathlon as an ideal sport to watch – check out her video interview at www.winterolympics.co.nz to find out why.
BIATHLON
comprises crosscountry skiing and rifle shooting mixing physical endurance with steely concentration. Heart rates vary between 200 on the course to 140 at the range and athletes must adjust quickly for maximum benefit. On arriving at the range biathletes must put their poles down and take five shots at a metal target fifty metres away. Events vary in distance from 7500m to 20,000m.
SKELETON
Sliders in the skeleton event at Vancouver 2010 will travel at around 100kmph down a newly built track so steep and fast that, on opening, athletes were asked to start half-way down until they had had a chance to get used to it. In skeleton, sliders lie on their stomachs on a small metal and fiberglass sled and race against the clock down a track with a 152m vertical drop. Tionette Stoddard, Iain Roberts and Ben Sandford are hoping to bring us the excitement of the skeleton this February.
SNOWBOARDING
Snowboarding is fast and free and we’ll have a strong group of boarders representing us in Vancouver. In the half pipe, boarders perform twists and tricks in a 22ft high half pipe. Watch out for likely contenders James Hamilton, Ben Stewart, Mitchell Brown, Juliane Bray, Paula Mitchell, Kendall Brown and Rebecca Sinclair.
SHORT TRACK SKATING
Short track speed skating is extreme. It takes place on a 111.12-metre oval track within a hockey rink and tight corners make it difficult for skaters to maintain control. A padding system is used to increase safety for the athletes. Short track speed skaters compete against each other, rather than the clock. New Zealanders Blake Skjellerup, Matt Fuller and Mark Jackson are vying for a spot in the Vancouver 2010 team.
SPEED SKATING
Speed skating is the fastest human-powered, non-mechanically aided sport in the world, reaching top speeds of over 60 kilometres per hour. Speed skating takes place on a 400 metre oval ice rink. Timed to one-hundredth of a second, athletes compete in pairs, skating counter-clockwise around the oval and changing lanes once per lap, to equalize the distance covered. New Zealander Shane Dobbin transferred from in-line skating to try for a spot in speed skating at Vancouver 2010.
CROSS COUNTRY SKIING
Cross country skiing is one of the world’s oldest, and toughest, sports. Competitors race between 1.2km and 50km using either the classic technique (skis move parallel to each other in machine-groomed tracks) or free (using an action similar to speed skating). New Zealand doctor Nat Anglem, Kiwi-Aussie Katie Calder and US-based student Ben Koons are all vying for a chance to ski cross country for New Zealand at Vancouver.
ALPINE SKIING
Annelise Coberger won New Zealand’s only winter Olympic medal in this sport in 1992 at Albertville. Alpine Skiers can reach speeds of more than 130kph, travelling down a vertical drop. This drop is made even more difficult with a series of gates the skiers must pass through. New Zealand’s Tim Café and Ben Griffin are hoping to take-on the world’s alpine skiers at Vancouver 2010.
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STORY BY + NZOC
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