2018 Olympic Preview
It’s that time again as the sports world pauses and focuses on the biggest sporting event in the world, the Olympics.
This year that focus will be on Pyeongchang, South Korea where the 2018 Winter Olympics are being held.
This version of the Olympics is always one of the more unique as it deals with a set of sports that aren’t the most accessible throughout the world.
The Winter Olympics are never as big as the Summer Olympics and they don’t have the same history.
For years the Summer Olympics were the only Olympic Games and every four years they were the peak of athleticism.
Eventually, other sports emerged though and the IOC organized the first ever Winter Olympics to highlight these other sports.
They had stood as a secondary event though as they were held in the same year as the Summer Games for years.
In 1994 the games stepped out on their own and the two-year split between Olympics began and the Winter games took their own stage.
To this day it remains a set of sports that is not the most inclusive in the world and that is the main reason why it remained below its big brother.
Most of the sports in the Winter Olympics require a winter climate to train in and so that immediately eliminates almost half of the world.
There aren’t a lot of countries that have great ski hills or bobsled tracks or even hockey rinks for athletes to train on.
That makes a massive difference because if half of the world can’t participate in the sports they don’t really care about the sports.
Without that care, they don’t participate and with the financial limitations of many of the sports, the participation is limited.
All of that put together makes the Winter Olympics an event that doesn’t garner as much love as the Summer version.
To a number of countries though this is their time to shine as they are not necessarily the countries that produce great talent in the Summer Olympics.
These are the countries where winter takes hold for close to half of the year and training for those summer sports is impossible without moving somewhere else.
Meanwhile, the winter athletes make the best of the winter and have plenty of places to train with some of the best facilities in the world.
These countries that look towards the Winter Games every four years as their time to showcase the talent they have on the biggest stage.
They may not make much of a mark in the summer games but every four years they are among the best countries in the world.
The winter games might take that backseat often but that doesn’t change what this event means for the athletes involved.
In any Olympics, the athletes are some of the most special athletes in the world as they play their sport simply for the love of the sport.
Sponsorships are there but they are pretty rare especially for the common Olympian who doesn’t create a big name for themselves.
The rest are amateurs who only get to see the big stage every four years while then entering anonymity.
For four years these athletes train in their own cities or travel around the world trying to find the best coaches to help them prepare for their one major competition.
There are plenty of world championships and national championships throughout the four years but these are rarely watched or paid attention to in those years.
They get ready for the Olympics with little fanfare or attention looking to just get better with every competition.
Although their accomplishments in this time are always applauded they will always have one goal in mind.
Winning a medal in the Olympics is the ultimate goal and with the Olympics only every four years they don’t get many chances to do that.
As the athletes gather for the 2018 version of the Olympics that pressure is on for all of them as they know this is their rare chance to step into the spotlight.
This is the time for the athletes and the countries to step up and show what they have in the most important event in amateur sports.
While they gather to compete and look to do it at the top level there will be plenty of stories to watch.
The Sport Addiction will go through some of the biggest stories facing the 2018 Winter Olympics over the next week with new sports to the political environment that these games enter.
The Sport Addiction 