Winter isn’t just skiing and snow. This season offers a wide panorama of sports, some well-known, others less so.
For example there are many sports to practice on ice in winter. The most famous of these include ice hockey, figure skating, speed skating, and curling… but there are also several lesser-known and more “curious” ice-based activities. Here are three that we’ve selected.
- ICE FLYING
Also known as “ice yachting”, this sport involves sailing (or skating) on a frozen lake aboard a sailboat equipped with special blades attached under the hull. The blades enable the boat to slide on the ice, and the sail – propelled by the wind – enables it to move.
- BANDY
A very distant cousin of football and a closer relative of hockey. Bandy is a sport from Northern Europe played by two teams of eleven athletes on an icy terrain the size of a football pitch. The aim is to score a point by hitting a small ball into the opponent’s goal with a stick. Unlike in hockey, the goalkeeper plays without a stick and is the only player who can touch the ball with his or her hands.
- SKELETON
Skeleton is a winter Olympic discipline in which athletes descend down an icy track on a sled equipped with skates, lying prone with the head forward and the feet at the back. The name of this sport originated in the 1980s, when the use of a sled with a metal frame resembling a skeleton was introduced. Hence its name of Skeleton.
