5 Winter Olympic Sports you don’t probably know about

5 Winter Olympics sports you probably don't know about

Mass Speedskating is a new sport at the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang. The Olympic Committee hope it brings the excitement back to the sport.

The Winter Olympics has landed in Pyeongchang, South Korea. With a record number of  athletes competing a number of new sports have been added. Here is a list of sports, new and classic, that you may not know about, but should.

Big Air

New to the Pyeongchang Olympics this year, Big Air for Snowboarding is a new take on a

Big Air for Snowboard is a new sport this year at Pyeongchang.

classic snowboard sport. Athletes drop in and head downhill to a very large jump in which they are scored, as usual, out of 100 for the difficulty of the tricks they manage to pull off, the execution of the tricks themselves and the landing of the tricks.

Riders will get two chances to wow the crowd and the judges in the qualifying rounds and three attempts in the final rounds, where the three scores will be added together to determine the medallists.

Mixed Team Alpine Skiing

For the first time, men and women will join forces for the new team event for alpine skiing.

Mixed Team Alpine Skiing is a new sport in the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics

This is different as it no longer focuses on the individual as instead of just the single genders racing the downhill slalom, the heats will be split up as men v men, women v women and so on; the winner from each heat moves on to the next round.

This new sport for the Olympics was originally debuted at the FIS Alpine World Ski Championship back in 2005 but this is the first time it has been seen at Olympic level.

Mass Speedskating

In what has always been a two-man sport, the mass start for Speedskating has been

Mass Speedskating is a new sport at the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang. The Olympic Committee hope it brings the excitement back to the sport.

brought in to add more excitement to the already fast-paced sport. The new format sees 24 Speedskaters race 16 laps around a 400-meter ice track.

The race includes four sprints where athletes can earn points and the top 3 finishers of the event will earn medals and the others will be determined in part by those points.

Skiathlon 

This is a relatively new Olympic event, first seen at Sochi four years ago. It involves the classic Cross-

The Skiathlon is a sport formerly known as ‘Pursuit’ where the athletes change skis midway through and continue through a second stage in the free technique

Country event in the first stage, then the skiers swap to skating skis in a transition area and continue on through the second stage in the free technique.

The men’s event is 15km x 15km and the women’s event is 7.5km x 7.5km.

Biathlon

The Biathlon is a simple sport but one that many don’t know about. It involves Skiing and shooting where the men

The Biathlon is a sport that combines Shooting and racing.

race five laps of 3km to a total of 15km. There are four shooting grounds – the first two prone, the last two standing. Athletes have to hit all five targets or be given a time penalty and are also marked on the individual sprints, ‘hunting’ or pursuit of the other athletes and whoever crosses the finishing line first wins.