Alpine (also known as downhill) skiing consists of five events. Men and women both compete in this Olympic sport. In each of the four events, competitors race down the mountain to see who can complete the course in the fastest time. Time is measured to the nearest .01, and ties are allowed.

Downhill

Downhill features the longest course and the highest speeds in alpine skiing. Most downhill courses begins at or near the top of the mountain. Alternating red and blue gates are spaced great distances apart, but not out of sight from each other. Scores in the downhill are based on a single run.

Super G

The Super-G is considered a speed discipline, like downhill, rather than a technical discipline, like the slalom races. Each skier makes one run down a single course and the fastest time determines the winner. Super-G requires skiers to ski quickly through a series of gates. Both feet must pass through the gate, or the skier is disqualified. The course is shorter than downhill but longer than a giant slalom course. Skiers need to be familiar with the course in order to avoid making wide turns that will cost them time. The first skiers down the slope have a smoother and therefore faster race.

Slalom, Giant Slalom

The slalom and giant slalom both require skiers to have good technique to enable them to ski down the course that involves much tighter turns than the speed disciplines. The giant slalom, a looser version of the slalom with fewer and wider turns raced on a longer course, also requires speed. The slalom features the shortest course and the quickest turns. In both slalom events, skiers makes two runs down two different courses on the same slope. The runs take place on the same day. The winner is the skier who has the shortest combined total.

Combined

The combined event requires the athlete to ski one downhill course, followed by two slalom runs. The times are added together and the fastest total time determines the winner. The combined downhill and the combined slalom competitions are separate from the regular downhill and slalom events, and the combined courses are shorter.

For more information, visit the official Olympic site. If you’re a visual learner, be sure to check out their Flash demos of the alpine disciplines.

You can try your hand at skiing in this online game.

Vancouver Canucks defenseman Ed Jovanovski will miss the Olympics because of a lower abdominal injury that requires surgery. Jovanovski will most likely be replaced by Toronto defenseman Bryan McCabe, who is just returning to play after a groin injury. Team Canada is also waiting to hear whether Anaheim defenseman Scott Niedermayer, who has a small tear in his knee that may require arthroscopic surgery, will be making the trip to Turin.

A week and a half. Do you have your snacks lined up? Tivo ready? Have you plotted what you’re going to watch and what you’re going to skip? How excited are you?

The Olympics falls within sweeps month, but does that guarantee NBC a clean sweep of viewers? Not necessarily. Some think that loyal viewers will continue to watch American Idol, which is up against the Olympics several nights. Now, we are an American Idol watching home, but we will probably watch the Olympics and record American Idol. Of course, since NBC is planning over 24 hours a day of Olympic coverage per day, I don’t know how we’ll manage to find time to watch the recordings. Maybe after the Olympics…

And already I’ve run out of clever things to say about how many days there are left.

Japan has banned their Olympic athletes from blogging, citing the Olympic Committee’s ban on athlete’s journalistic activities. They say that bloggers may be disqualified. But what of the United States? Many U.S. athletes have web sites. Some of those web sites include blogs. The site Journey to Torino is all about blogging the path to the Olympics. Will it be shut down when the Olympics start?

This brings up the same blogging question that gets asked over and over. To what extent are bloggers (athletes, or otherwise) truly journalists?

Brazilian bobsledder Eric Maleson won’t be piloting a bobsled in next month’s Olympics. But he will be headed to Turin. Maleson is the president of the Brazilian Ice Sports Federation, managing the nation’s Olympic hopefuls in bobsledding, luge, skeleton sled, curling, skating and ice hockey.

The only Brazilian competitors in the Turin Olympics will be the members of the four man bobsled team. They are hoping to improve on the team’s 27th finish at the Salt Lake City Olympics. While 27th may not sound like anything to write home about, it was quite impressive for a first Olympic appearance.

Bobsled is pretty familiar to most of us. If you didn’t know about it before the Jamaican bobsled team, the movie Cool Runnings probably gave you at least a bit of an introduction. The sport involves steering a bullet-like bobsled down a curved mountain track.

The driver steers the sled with ropes connected to polished steel runners. Most drivers wear gloves; some steer bare-handed to have a better feel for the ropes. The crew members can help with the steering by shifting their weight. Since they can’t see during a run, they must learn the timing of each course.

The two- or four-man crews push-start the sled before jumping in. The crewman in front (called the driver) steers the sled, and the man in the back is the brakeman. On the four-man team, the other two are called side-push men. Because gravity and the push start are the only things that power the sled, a good push start is critical.

In the Olympics, you can look for the men on teams of four and two. Women’s bobsledding was added in the 2002 Olympics, and will be back in Turin with the two man (or woman, I guess, in this case) bobsled.

Bobsleds reach speeds of up to 90 miles per hour. Runs take less than a minute. When braking, the crew feels five times the force of gravity.

There are maximum weight regulations for the sleds, including the crew. If a sled weighs in under the weight requirement, they can add weights. It is illegal for the sleds to be heated, and they actually take the sled’s temperature before each run. There is also no lubrication allowed.

If you want a firsthand look at what bobsledding is all about, take a look at this game. I’ve decided I definitely shouldn’t plan on a career in bobsledding after flying off the track several times. Even if you’re great at the game, you should let your sled fly off the track at least once, just to hear the sledders yell “Oh No!”

Current Olympic champion Sylke Otto beat 1998 Olympic champion Silke Kraushaar on Saturday in the final World Cup luge race leading up to the Turin Olympics. Kraushaar is the Olympic favorite going into Turin. A German woman is expected to win gold at the 2006 Olympics. That’s not surprising since they haven’t lost any kind of race since 1997.

German men are also favorites to medal in Turin.

Look for a new poll coming up in the next day or two.

Just posted this week’s Winter Olympics Trivia Quiz. Click here to test your Winter Olympic knowledge.

Enjoy…

Well, it’s official. Michelle Kwan will be going to the Olympics. The five member committee unanimously approved her to represent the United States at the 2006 Turin Olympics. Kwan fell on a double axel in the demonstration, but other than that skated a solid program. The committee who watched her skate is optimistic that she can win the gold medal at the upcoming Olympics.

Less than two weeks and counting.

There are AP photos of her leaving the skate center where she skated for five judges. They were taken about an hour ago. She looks happy enough, which would seem to indicate she didn’t fall down. I think, absent a major catastrophe in her program, she will be approved for the Olympic team.

Freestyle skiing has been a part of the Olympics since 1992, when mogul skiing was added at Albertville. In 1994, at the Lillehammer Olympics, the aerial competition was added (until I looked up this information, I had completely forgotten that there were back to back Winter Olympics when they made the switch over to every two years for the Summer and Winter Olympics).

Moguls, for those of you (like myself) who don’t ski, are basically big bumps and mounds of snow. It’s much harder to ski over these rough patches than down an ordinary hill. The mogul race is run down a mogul course that includes two jumps. The Olympic format consists of two runs, a qualifying run and a final run. The best time wins.

Aerial consists of a two-jump qualifier followed by a two-jump final. Now, by jumps, I don’t mean ski jumping where you fly off the end of a long slide and see how far you can go. No, this is aerial acrobatics. The athletes are limited to a maximum of three flips. What? Three flips?!? With skis on? Okay, then. The jumps are then scored on the take-off, execution, and landing. There is a difficulty factor that is figure in, as well.

I have to say this is one of the Olympic sports that I’ve never really paid attention to, but I think my kids would love it, and I’m looking forward to it, as well.