Germany will be sending three less officials than intended to the Turin Olympics. Three officials, thought to be coaches, were dropped from the team after background checks revealed that they had former ties to the East German secret police. This change is not expected to hurt Germany’s chance to win the medal count at the 2006 Turin Olympics.

I was tempted to say read my entry on skeleton and then imagine feet first on your back, instead of headfirst on your stomach, but I decided that might be a bit simplistic. Luge is considered by many the most dangerous Olympic sport. You would think that title would go to headfirst skeleton, but, no– that way you can at least see where you are going. Though, without brakes, I’m not sure how that helps.

Luge is the French word for sled. In the luge, there are no brakes, just like in skeleton. One or two lugers ride a sled, lying on their backs, down a mountain at speeds up to 80 mph. They steer by exerting pressure on the sled with their bodies.

The singles format for Olympic luge is different than other sledding sports, which usually consist of two timed runs in one day. In the luge singles format, athletes make four runs down the course over two days of competition. Men and women compete on the same track, but the women start the race at a point farther down the track.

The Turin luge track was supposed to be changed in 2005 after a series of accidents injured several competitors. Luge officials urged track officials to simplify the track.

Two weeks from tomorrow is the big day!

Michelle Kwan will skate for members of the U.S. Figure Skating Commission on Friday to determine whether she is fit to stay on the 2006 U.S. Olympic skating team. Kwan, as we all remember, missed Nationals due to a groin injury, but was given a spot on the Olympic team, as long as the Committee members judged she was fit enough to compete in the Olympics. Kwan replaced Emily Hughes, who finished third at Nationals.

If you are and you haven’t finalized travel arrangements, you might want to check out Dream of Italy. They have complete travel news related to the Turin Olympics. There are hotel rooms, packages, even places where you can find someone to rent you an apartment for the length of the Olympics. There are also links to places where you can buy Olympic tickets.

I can hardly believe that it’s almost February.

Skiing and guns seems like a dangerous combination, but in the Winter Olympics this combination is known as biathlon. Biathlon is very popular in areas like Germany, Norway, and Russia. In other parts of the world it’s much less well-known. At the Turin Olympics, there will be four events for men and four for women.

So, what is biathlon?

Each event consists of a cross-country ski race. Along the race route, there are shooting stops: two stops for the sprint and relay; four stops for the pursuit and individual events. Half of the shooting stops are standing and half are lying down.

At each stop, competitors have five bullets and five targets (50 m away) to hit. Time or distance is added based on how the athlete performs in the shooting. Each miss in the sprint, pursuit, and relay events results in a 150-m penalty loop. Each miss in the individual event adds one minute to the athlete’s final time.

In the relay, each four-person team has three extra bullets at each shooting stop. The extra bullets must be hand-loaded one at a time, and they must be used until all five targets have been hit or all the bullets have been shot.

So, the Olympics are coming, and you have kids. Where can you go to teach them a little about the Olympics or just to let them have some Olympic fun?

PBS Cyber School has a fun site with plenty of activities based on skiing, skating and snowboarding. If you’re a homeschooler, you could use this as a curriculum for a couple of weeks as your kids learn some math, geography and more.

Winter Olympics for Kids has some fun links, including a funTorino cyber hunt.

Then there’s the official Torino website. You’ll need to click on the Kids’ area and then English, unless of course you speak Italian or French. There’s all sorts of interesting information on the site.

Enchanted Learning is one of my favorite sites for kids. Their Olympic site is no exception.

Did I forget to mention your favorite site for kids? Let me know what they are in the comments section.

Tim Nardiello will not be coaching the U.S. skeleton team at the Turin Olympics. Just this morning, we wrote that an arbitrator had overturned Nardiello’w suspension, citing a lack of evidence. However, the U.S. Olympic Committee has said that they are not going to credential him because they feel that he has shown inappropriate judgement and violated ethical codes.

Um, I kind of forgot this yesterday.

Normally, cross country skiing is pretty straightforward. You put on cross country skis, and you ski across less mountainous terrain than downhill skiing– sometimes even flat land.

In the Olympics, this competitive sport becomes more complex, comprised of twelve separate events. Women compete in the sprint, team sprint, 10km individual start, 15km pursuit, 30km mass start and the 4x5km relay. Men compete in the sprint, team sprint, 15km individual start, 30km pursuit, 50km mass start and the 4x10km relay.

In the sprint events, individual time trials determine the 16 finalists who will compete in the quarter finals. The competitors then go through quarter-final and semi-final rounds to determine the final four who will race for the gold. So, that means in the finals there are three winners and one loser. Ouch.

Team sprint is a two person relay event. The competitors complete the relay 3 times. That means person A and person B run a relay that looks like this– A, B, A, B, A, B. Again, there are a series of heats, culminating in a five team final race.

Mass start is pretty much a race to the finish. Everyone lines up and the first person across the finish line wins.

Interval start is similar to mass start, but the racers start 15 or 30 seconds apart, depending on the event. Winners are based on individual times, rather than who actually crosses the finish line first.

The relays are mass start. Teams of four race sequentially, and the first team to cross the finish line wins.

Pursuit involves switching skis and styles halfway through the race. The styles of cross country are classic and freestyle. Classic utilizes ski wax is used to create friction, which allows the skier to use certain ski techniques, such as herringbone, diagonal stride, double pole with kick, and double pole. Freestyle, also known as skate skiing, involves the skier pushing one ski outward with the ski angled, so that the inner edge of the ski is driven against the snow, much like an ice skater. Skate skis tend to be shorter and stiffer than those used in classical technique, and poles longer.

U.S. skeleton coach Tim Nardiello was reinstated Monday night after an arbitrator found no evidence of misconduct. It is still unknown whether he will coach the Olympic team. More details are expected today with the official announcement from the U.S. Bobsled and Skeleton Federation.

After failing a drug test, Zach Lund has received only a warning and is, therefore, eligible to compete in the Turin Olympics. Lund has taken hair-restoration products since 1999 and has always declared them on medical forms filled out for competition. After testing positive, he is no longer taking Proscar, the pill he was using at the time of the positive drug test, and is even avoiding multivitamins and other over-the-counter products, just to be safe.

In other skeleton news, suspended U.S. skeleton coach Tim Nardiello is expected to learn later today the outcome of an arbitration hearing he and the U.S. Bobsled and Skeleton Federation went to in Albany, N.Y. last week. The ruling would determine whether the USBSF was justified in suspending Nardiello, who was accused of sexually harassing two members of his team.

Snowboarding has been a part of the Olympics since 1998. It has been around as a sport since the 1960s. It grew in popularity in the 1980s. But what is it? Is it skateboarding on snow? Skiing on a surfboard?

There are six snowboard events on the programme of the Olympic Winter Games: men’s halfpipe, ladies’ halfpipe, men’s parallel giant slalom and ladies’ parallel giant slalom, men’s snowboard cross and ladies’ snowboard cross. Snowboard cross is making its debut at the 2006 Turin Olympics.

The halfpipe is similar to skateboarding. There is a half-cylinder shaped course, and competitors perform acrobatic feats while going down the course. Speed is unimportant. It’s all about form and difficulty of the tricks performed.

Parallel giant slalom pits one snowboarder against a competitor in a head to head race down the mountain. After qulifying rounds, a group of 16 participates in a tournament, racing two at a time, until there is a winner.

Snowboard cross is a little like motorcross on snowboards. There is a challenging course, including jumps and obstacles. Groups of four race at the same time, with the top two finishers going on to the next round.

I can see how snowboarding is a challenging sport. But I still don’t know if I buy it as an Olympics sport. If inline skaters have to become ice speed skaters to participate in the Olympics, maybe snowboarders should become skiers. This is probably a sure sign that I’m getting old– you know you’re getting older when you start wanting things to stay the same and longing for the “good old days”.

For more on snowboarding, plus a video (kids, don’t try these stunts at home), visit the U.S. snowboard team’s site.

It seems really late to be still naming athletes to the Olympics, which starts in just over 2 weeks, but that’s just what happened yesterday. The 2006 Olympic snowboarding team was announced yesterday. It consists of 16 athletes: eight in halfpipe; five in snowboardcross, which is making its Olympic debut in Turin; and three in parallel giant slalom.

The shoo-ins were Shaun White and Gretchen Bleiler. Defending Olympic champion Kelly Clark also made the team, but defending Champion Ross Powers was unable to make the team.

It is still weird to me that snowboarding is an Olympic sport. It is the equivalent, in my opinion, of skateboarding or surfing being turned into Olympic sports. I think more research is needed. I guess today’s sport that I’ll be explaining will be snowboarding. Maybe it will give me greater respect for a sport that I truly don’t understand.