Last night, Beijing time, at the magnificent National Stadium, the bright five-star red flag was slowly raised. In the sound of trumpets, the melody of "My Motherland and Me" lingered, and the 24th Winter Olympic Games in Beijing officially opened. With the sound of familiar music, athletes from all over the world slowly entered.
For sports fans who don't pay much attention to snow and ice sports, the faces of many athletes may look strange. In particular, at the opening ceremony we will find that there are many small countries with low profile, they only sent two people to participate, and they all participated in the "alpine skiing" event. As we all know, the Winter Olympics are not as good as other athletics or three major balls, basically need to be carried out in an environment with ice and snow, so the threshold is relatively high. So why do so many countries, even equatorial tropical countries, come to participate in the "alpine skiing" program?
Alpine skiing, known as the "jewel in the crown of the Winter Olympics", can be subdivided into five sub-events of men's/women's downhill, super big slalom, big slalom, slalom and all-around. According to the regulations, only athletes within the top 500 of the FIS points ranking in each minor event are eligible for the Olympic alpine skiing competition. However, if all alpine skiers in a given country are not ranked within 500 points, or only one person is ranked within 500 points, the IOC will still allocate two athletes in the country, one man and one woman, to qualify for the Winter Olympic Skills Competition.
As a result, athletes from many small countries have qualified to participate in the Winter Olympics because of this "quota clause".
According to the data, in the last PyeongChang Olympic Games alone, there were 322 alpine skiers from 80 countries or regions, far surpassing wild skiing (319 people), biathlon (219 people), bobsleigh (164 people), steel frame snowmobiles (50 people), curling (116 people) and short track speed skating (115 people).
Among them, looking back at the alpine skiing medal table of the previous Winter Olympic Games, Austria's 37 gold, 41 silver and 43 bronze results are well-deserved project kings. Of course, although alpine skiing does not require high standards like short track speed skating and speed skating, the event is not inferior. Athletes like Pakistan, Nigeria and even East Timor, which has barely snowed, have sent athletes, and Saudi Arabia has even recruited winter athletes on social media. It is enough to see how popular alpine skiing is in snow sports.