weird olympic sports

Ski jumping involves shooting yourself down a steep incline on two little sticks (some call them skis; were not convinced this is an accurate description given the circumstances), then launching yourself into the air to see how far you can travel. And that tends to be a long, long way. For spectators, its like seeing Superman in action, but without any of the superhuman powers. If hanging in an abyss high above snow-packed ground sounds pleasant, well, this might just be the sport for you. Dont even get us started on ski aerials.

As far as bizarre sports go, curling, in all its slippery, broom-wielding glory, leaves us especially captivated. And its not just the fascinating activities and conversations among teammates that keep us glued to the TV screen, its also the bewilderment: Who on Earth conceived of this sport in the first place?

Take two favorite pastimes, soccer and hockey, smash them together, and you have one of the strangest winter games ever included in the Olympics. Bandy was a demonstration sport in the 1952 Oslo Winter Olympics and involves two teams of 11 players that compete in a 90 minute game, which is played on a rink the size of a soccer field. They took the sticks and skates from hockey and use a ball instead of a puck. Basically its field hockey on ice skates, but with soccer rules. The game itself isnt necessarily strange, but why bother when you already have an Olympic event in which teams skate around whacking something with a stick? Maybe theyll renew interest in bandy by tossing elements from football or baseball in the mix as well.

The luge is a narrow sled that speeds down mountains at faster speeds than both the skeleton and the bobsled. Its inclusion as a weird event lies in its extreme danger. People have died. Enough said. Olympians competing in this event lie on their backs on a sled as they hurl themselves down an icy track, and pray to whatever god they favor that they dont end in a mess of bone and blood. The pairs event is even better, where your teammate lies on top of you so you dont die cold and alone. This suicide mission is such a popular event in the Winter Olympics that they decided to expand the insanity in 2014 with the luge team relay event.

Skiing and shooting. Together. Is there any need to go on? The biathlon is a strange event primarily because it combines two things you dont see done together in the natural world. Competitors must complete a cross-country race, pause to take five shots at a target, race again, and shoot again, until theyve completed the required number of loops. Poor shots get time added to your final score. The competitor with the lowest combined time wins the gold. Perhaps they should make it interesting and require the athletes to shoot while skiing. It would still be less dangerous than the luge.

This is real. Skijoring is a real sport that many, many people still participate in. As shown above, its an activity that involves strapping your feet to skis and your torso to dogs and then going as fast as you can. In fancier locales, horses may be used instead of dogs. You can also (obviously) use a snowmobile, though that would sort of take the sport out of it, wouldnt it? Skijoring made only one appearance in the Olympics at the 1928 Games in St. Moritz, Switzerland. Being one of the aforementioned fancier locales, the athletes were towed behind horses without riders, and for some reason, the race was held on a frozen lake, where there were no jumps. Switzerland swept the race, though it didnt really matter since it was just a demonstration event.

Hooray for dogs! Sled dog racing is exactly what it sounds like, and youre probably used to seeing the sport in the context of the Iditarod in Alaska. Whereas those dogs run for days and cover over 1,000 miles, the Olympic sled dog racing demonstration was a much more humble affair. Taking place at the 1932 Games in Lake Placid, the single appearance of sled dog racing at the Olympics was a fleeting one. The event saw two races on a 25.1-mile course. Six dogs pulled each sled and times ranged from two to three-and-a-half hours. Only two countries participated: Canada and the United States. Canada won by less than two minutes.

Although its name sort of looks like broken English, ice stock sport is a truly popular activity in the Alps, where it is known as Eisstockschieben. If youve ever played bocce ball or understand curling, ice stock sport will make immediate sense to you. (Or you should. Truth be told Ive watched tons of curling and still have no idea whats going on.) Players basically slide ice stocks, metal contraptions that resemble Roombas wearing funny hats, as close as they can to a target. You also get play for distance.

Now this just sounds like an accident waiting to happen. As the name implies, speed skiing involves going really fast on skis as fast as you can, in fact. Its not a timed race. The point is literally to clock the fastest speed while going down a hill. Dont try this at home.

While humans still compete to jump as far as they can in current Olympiads, horses were cut from the sport in 1900, after their only chance at gold, in Paris. The winning jump was measured at just over 20 feet, by Constant van Langendonck on his horse Extra Dry. For the record, Langendonck got the medal, not Extra Dry.