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Ski Mountaineering Sprint is now my favorite Winter Olympics sport en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S… . It appears to combine all the physical activity of a week-long ski trip into a 1:30 uphill, 0:20 staircase ascent, another quick uphill, and then a minute-long downhill dash; it's all over in 3:00!
When the atheletes take the sealskins off at the top, they stick them in a pouch on the front of their Lycra suits that the ARD announcers amusingly called a "Kangarutasche".
This is a perfect event for these newfangled camera drones olympics.com/ioc/news/i… and sports.yahoo.com/articl… . I also noticed that officials have started to use some pretty sophisticated electronic starter pistols en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S… .
I think one of the (many) reasons that this Winter Olympics has been so enjoyable to watch is that it has been snowing in the Tirolean and Lombardian Alps for much of the time. There's nothing more depressing than watching these events on tiny strips of man-made snow.
P.S. I see that freestyle skating is scheduled for later today, an event listed in German as "Eizel Kür". Einzel means "single" or "individual", distinguishing it from pair events (Paarlauf) or team events, and Kür comes from an older German word meaning "choice" or "free choice" (related to the verb küren, to choose or elect). It's an interesting linguistic detail; while English uses "freestyle" or "free skate," German preserves the older notion of choice embedded in the word Kür.
"Kür" derives from the Old High German verb kiosan/kūren, meaning "to choose" or "to elect," harking back to Proto-Germanic roots, not Latin. But, confusingly, "Kur" (sans umlauts but sounds identical) *does* come from the Latin "cura" (care/treatment), so is related to "curate," "cure," and so on. A Kurhaus or Kurort (spa town) refers to a place where people go to take a health cure (drinking mineral waters, taking baths, that sort of thing). The whole tradition of 19th century European spa culture. Baden-Baden, Bad Homburg, Bad Ems ... the word "Bad" (bath) in a German town's name often signals it was a Kurort. I'll have more on this later, as Bad Homburg was recently authorized to place "Kurstadt" on its city limits signs.
