Skeletons, chariot races, knee torture and bar games. My hidden highlights for the Turin Games.
1) Ghouls and Champagne
I love sports that involve concrete, ice, steel blades and high speeds. Well, O.K. I love to watch them.
There are many ways to negociate an ice track, but, in my opinion, skeleton is the most spectacular. The sport was glamorously invented in Switzerland of the 1880's when underoccupied gentlemen raced down the road from St. Moritz to nearby Celerina for the prize of a bottle of champagne. It is definitely not, as the ghoulish name suggests, a game for the faint of heart.
Athletes throw themselves head first down a narrow, icy tube on a steel-frame that looks hardly more stable than a tea-tray. They reach speeds of up to 130 kilometres an hour, with their bellies just a precious few centimetres above the ice. Their heads jut precariously off the front of the small sled and their legs dangle off the back like those of a dead chicken.
The athletes have neither brakes nor mechanical steering to control their sled and on their way down they are often buffeted off the steep ice walls of the run. It is not unusual to see a competitor arriving at the bottom with tears in their suits.
I am delighted to say Austria has very realistic medal chances in the halloween race. The Tirolean Martin Rettl won Silver in Salt Lake City. Could he go one better in Turin? He has not had a great season, but his compatriot Markus Penz fine-tuned his preparations with a World Cup podium place at the weekend.
Boys, your nation expects!
A wise idea?
2) Knees Like a Bonking Bunny
"Thud. Ouch! Thud. Ouch! Thud. Splat.". That sums up my experiences with those mounds of snows we call "moguls" and, as any right minded person should, I have spent the past two decades carefully avoiding them. That's why I'm fascinated with those men and women who don't just search moguls out, but have also made a career out of them.
I've seen a World Cup mogul race live in the French resort of Tignes. A foolish, broad-legged friend was taking part, or 'making up the numbers' as he charmingly put it. Just looking down the hill was frightening enough for me. The bumps are carved from ice-packed snow and can be as big as a car. You'd think it was a mere matter of surviving these horrors, but the athletes have to survive them GRACEFULLY enough to impress the judges AND perform two trick jumps from specially constructed launch pads.
Just watch how their knees are propelled towards their chins, bobbing up and down like the tail of a bonking bunny, before they explode into a 360 degree jump, while the beat of rock music blares across the course.
It's all very dramatic and vaguely worrying. Austria is sending Margarita Marbler to the women's event, but no men. Shame! I'd like to volunteer our very own Heinz Reich for Vancouver 2010.
Would you do this?
3) Modern Day Chariot Racing
Short track speed skating, even more than boardercross, is the nearest thing the modern world has to the carnage of Ancient Roman chariot racing.
Let's quickly look at this sport mathematically: Four to six skaters on the ice rink, speeds of around 50 kilometres per hour and straights of only 30 metres. Add to this 4 pent up years of desperate ambition. It's hardly an equation for a peaceful ending!
Deliberate bumping or shoving is not allowed, but obviously hard to avoid. This sport tests those who have the fastest legs and the strongest nerves.
Four years ago, short track also provided the best comeback story since Maximus Decimus Meridius entered the Colosseum. On the 16th February 2002, Steven Bradbury sped to Australia's first ever Winter Olympic gold. The victory came eight years after Bradbury nearly bled to death in the rink when a competitor's skate split open his carotid artery (the Halsschlagader) and two years after breaking his neck in competition. Eat your heart out Hermann Maier!
I tell you, those Aussies are made of strong stuff.
Carnage waiting to happen?
4) Rocks and Brushes
What larks! And you just need three mates, a large piece of rock and some brushes.
You slide your slab of granite down an ice rink and then, in the style of an old sea captain, shout loud and desperate instructions at your broom-weilding friends. They then brush speedily away at the drops of moisture on the ice, which helps guide your stone. If you don't think they are working hard enough, the official call is "Hurry hard!" - it's curling-speak for "get on with it with it you lazy bastards!"
Curling was invented in Scotland 500 years ago (as was log chucking). It is a sport of extraordinary precision, I'm told. It's a sport of balletic team co-ordination, I'm told. But, personally, I think it is an absolute hoot. It's a bar room game for the ice bar, the perfect way to spend the cold winters with your drinking mates when skiing has finally destroyed your knees. I can hardly wait.
But we Brits take it very seriously, apparently. Four years ago, over six million of us stayed up beyond midnight to watch the British women's team win a gold medal in Salt Lake City.
Once again, since nose-sprays are banned, it's Britain's best chance of a medal. So when you are toasting another victory from Benni, Hermann or Marlies, I'll be at the ice rink in the picturesque Piedmont village of Pinerolo singing "It's coming home, It's coming home, curling's coming home!"
Since there is no Austrian Olympic team for this worthiest of occupations, I suggest that FM4 puts a team together for Vancouver. It might be more up our street than football. I'll be coach.
I'll be reporting live for FM4 from the Turin Olympics. Hear more about my mission on the Morning Show, 8th February.
Vienna | 7.2.2006 | 18:03 
