Where Can I Try Winter Olympics Sports?
Don’t miss the Winter Olympic action, try it for yourself!
Been watching the Sochi action and fancy trying your hand at some of the snowy sports yourself? Well, they all take skill and serious safety concerns, but there are places you can give these adrenaline junkie sports a try!
Mainly focusing around former Winter Olympic cities, head to such places as Utah, with its huge Olympic Track, or Salt Lake City, Vancouver etc, for the best in terms of winter sports, and the best facilities overall.
Of course, if you’re a beginner, you might be better off starting at one of the ski resorts worldwide, and learning your skills on the nursery slopes, to get a feel for the way you need to move, the safety concerns you need to take into account etc.
Austria and Switzerland are huge big hitters in alpine sports, with countless resorts offering ski and snowboarding areas for every level, from beginners, intermediate and advanced. Once you’re more au fait with what you’re doing, you can move onto some of the more diverse Olympic sports.
The luge looks like one of those high adrenaline sports, that could have serious consequences if done wrong! Fantastic to watch, there are several US centres where you can train and give this a go yourself. Olympic Sports Complex in Lake Placid, New York and the Upper Peninsula Luge Club in Michigan are just two of the many centres where you can start small and build up to something bigger and faster. Oh, and if you’re not sure what the luge is, it’s basically a sled – a really fast sled.
The half pipe is another of those sports that you probably won’t have heard of unless you’re into your winter sports, or if you’ve just started watching the Sochi action. Used in snowboarding and many other less snowy sports, again this is a sport that you can give a go yourself, and the usual snowboarding venues will have this on offer. Aspen, Colorado – is just one of the options.
For the more diverse of the winter sports on offer at the Olympics, such as curling, you might need to search your alpine resorts to find out if there are any lessons on offer, but around the Olympics, and shortly afterwards, you’ll probably find several centres that do offer demonstrations at the least.
Skiing and ski jumping however, you’ll have no problem with, with France, Italy, and as mentioned before, Austria and Switzerland, offering European options, as well as Canada and various US sites too.
If watching the Sochi action has whet your appetite for trying your hand at these wintery sports, give it a go! Who knows, you might be the next big hope for a medal.
I soooo sooo soooo want to try the Luge. I love that Matt and Al tried it on the NBC morning show. So hilarious but so fun. That has been on my bucket list for ages. The half pipe would be fun too.