The Winter Olympics - French Style

David and I honestly don't watch a lot of television, for the obvious reason that most of it is in French. So when the Olympics come around, it's a great way for us to enjoy different sports without having to understand what the commentators are saying.

I had a suspicion, though, so I called my mom last week to verify: which Olympics sports were they seeing on tv?

"Oh, bobsled. Figure skating, skiing. And short track, of course."

There is little doubt that each country shows the events where their favorite athletes are. Hence, the Americans follow Apollo Ohno, Bode Miller, and that new figure skating darling, I'd imagine. But aside from the favorites, I do remember watching a fair variety of winter sports during the Olympics when we lived in the States.

Here, we see biathlon. Lots and lots of biathlon.

If NBC hasn't been boring you with the same in the States, I remind you that the biathlon is the cross country skiing + rifle shooting event. Apparently the French are really good at it.

It was interesting for the first few days. Now we're asking each other daily if this event is ever going to end.

Since the French love skiing, we also see all of the skiing events. Cross country, nordic combined (we had to look that one up), downhill, super combined, and loads of ski jumping. I don't understand ski jumping, and I do wish it to be over with the biathlon.

We've seen about two minutes of short track. About 10 minutes of a few random hockey games. We saw one French guy doing six really boring speed skating laps by himself. The French and American curling teams scoring zero points against each other. A little bit of snowboarding (until the French were eliminated), a few minutes of figure skating, and forget bobsled, luge, or skeleton, the French have never heard of them and therefore they don't exist.