These are the sports the New Zealand team is competing in at the 2010 Winter Olympics.
Described as the motorcross of skiing, skier cross is a downhill race incorporating jumps, bends, rolls and ridges. The course is designed to test the athletes skill and endurance and Mitchey Greig from Queenstown promises to be right there with the best of them. Each start comprises four skiers, the best two then progress to the next round.
Short track speed skating is extreme. It takes place on a 111.12-metre oval track within a hockey rink and tight corners make it difficult for skaters to maintain control. A padding system is used to increase safety for the athletes. Short track speed skaters compete against each other, rather than the clock. New Zealander Blake Skjellerup joins the Vancouver 2010 team.
Speed skating is the fastest human-powered, non-mechanically aided sport in the world, with athletes reaching top speeds of over 60 kilometres per hour. Speed skating takes place on a 400 metre oval ice rink. Timed to one-hundredth of a second, athletes compete in pairs, skating counter-clockwise around the oval and changing lanes once per lap, to equalize the distance covered. New Zealander Shane Dobbin transferred from in-line skating to compete at Vancouver 2010.
Cross country skiing is one of the world’s oldest, and toughest, sports. Competitors race between 1.2km and 50km using either the classic technique (skis move parallel to each other in machine-groomed tracks) or free (where skiers use an action similar to speed skating to move forward). Kiwi-Aussie Katie Calder and US-based student Ben Koons are skiing cross country for New Zealand at Vancouver.
Annelise Coberger won New Zealand’s only winter Olympic medal in this sport in 1992 at Albertville. Alpine Skiers can reach speeds of more than 130 kilometres an hour, travelling down a vertical drop that ranges from 180 metres (slalom) to 1,100 metres (downhill) for men and 140 metres (slalom) to 800 metres (downhill) for women. The vertical drop is made even more difficult because of a series of gates the skiers must pass through. New Zealand’s Tim Café and Ben Griffen are taking-on the world’s alpine skiers in February.
Sarah Murphy describes Biathlon as an ideal sport to watch – check out her video interview to find out why. Biathlon comprises cross-country skiing and rifle shooting mixing physical endurance with steely concentration. Heart rates vary between 200 on the course to 140 at the range and athletes must adjust quickly for maximum benefit. On arriving at the range biathletes must put their poles down and take five shots at a metal target fifty metres away. Events vary in distance from 7500m to 20,000m.
Sliders in the skeleton event at Vancouver 2010 will travel at around 100kmph down a newly built track so steep and fast that, on opening, athletes were asked to start half-way down until they had had a chance to get used to it. In skeleton, sliders lie on their stomachs on a small metal and fiberglass sled and race against the clock down a track with a 152m vertical drop. Tionette Stoddard, Iain Roberts and Ben Sandford are bringing us the excitement of the skeleton this February.
Snowboarding is one of New Zealand’s fastest growing sports and we’ll have a strong group of boarders representing us in Vancouver. In the halfpipe, one snowboarder at a time performs jumps, twists and tricks in a snow tube with 22ft high sides. The riders are judged on the height and style of their tricks. Watch out for contenders James Hamilton, Mitchell Brown, Juliane Bray, Kendall Brown and Rebecca Sinclair.
