THE WINTER OLYMPIC GAMES

I’m Marta, from Soria and I’m going to write about the Winter Olympic Games now that they have just finished. This competition has taken place since 1924, when the first ones took place in France. Before this, the first multi-sport event especially for winter was the Nordic games, held in Sweden in 1901. Like the summer Olympics, they are held every four years, but they don’t coincide with each other. However, fewer countries participate in these games compared with the summer ones. Maybe this happens because many of the sports that are played in the Winter Olympic Games are quite strange or, at least, not very well-known. There are lots of types of skiing, like alpine, freestyle or cross-country. There are also other sports, like snowboarding, skating, hockey, curling and skeleton. These two last ones are new sports that have been added to the Olympic Games in the last years. Anyway, they have become quite famous in these games and lots of people know now about these sports.

As always when we talk about sport at these levels, we also have to talk about doping. It was in 1967 when the International Olympic Committee started to make drug testing protocols. The last Winter Olympics, hosted in Turin in 2006, were famous because of a scandal involving blood doping. This caused the suspension of 12 cross-country skiers. Other three skiers tested positive after the Olympic Games took place and their medals were taken.

This year, the Winter Olympic Games have taken place in Vancouver, Canada. United States is the one that won most medals, with 37, followed by Germany, with 30, and Canada, with 26. Sweden is in the eighth place, together with China and France, with 11 medals so you can be happy. On the other hand, Spain has not won any.