The Olympic Games are the most striking sporting event in the world, which will be attended by hundreds of athletes from different countries. Those who are lucky enough to step on the Olympic podium will forever remain an example for millions, and their achievements will be preserved in the history of world sports. The 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi promise to be the loudest sporting event in recent years. Especially for them, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has included in the program not only classical disciplines, but also several new sports.
The 2014 Winter Olympics program consists of fifteen winter sports disciplines that have been combined into seven Olympic sports. This includes 3 ice skating, 6 skiing, 2 bobsleigh, and 4 individual sports. A total of 98 sets of medals will be drawn, which exceeds the corresponding awards at the 2010 Wakuvere Olympics by 12 sets.
New sports destinations at the Olympics
In 2011, the IOC Executive Committee added 6 more new competitions to the Olympic program, including women's ski jumping, team figure skating competitions, luge relay, women's and men's freestyle halfpipe, mixed relay in biathlon.
Halfpipe is one of the newest winter sports destinations that are very popular all over the world. Competitions on it are held in a special concave structure covered with snow, in which there are two opposite slopes and a space between them. Athletes move from one wall to another, jump and perform tricks with each move.
The mixed relay also represents a new trend in biathlon, where women run two stages and men run two stages with two firing lines. The Mixed Relay is considered the youngest type of biathlon competition included in the Championships and World Cup. It was first held in 2002. As part of the World Championship, the relay race was held in 2005. And since 2011, it has been included in the Olympic Games.
Adding 3 new disciplines
In the same year, at a meeting in Durban (South Africa), 3 more new disciplines for men and women were included in the Sochi 2014 program: slopestyle in freestyle, slopestyle in snowboard and parallel team slalom in snowboard. Slopestyle consists in performing a series of acrobatic jumps on skis on pyramids, springboards, railings, drops, counter-slopes, etc., which are located sequentially along the course.
