Essay: Snow Sports

Snow sports have a large impact on snow tourism and huge amount of revenue is earned through sports and leisure activities. It is defined as “a sport commonly played during winter, usually a sport played on snow or ice” (answers.com). There are various snow sports but none famous than ice skating and skiing. Other snow sports include snow boarding, sledding and team sports like ice hockey, Curling, broomball, bandy, ringette and ice stock sport and sledge hockey. It also includes activities like tobogganing, ice boating, snow balding, monoskiing and skwal.

Ice-skating is using special boots with blades to travel on snow. It is usually done on frozen lakes and snow rinks that are specially made for skating. Ice-skating has three basic forms speed skating, figure skating, and ice dancing. The

Winter Olympic games feature all three forms of ice-skating.

Speed skating, as its name suggests is speeding or racing on ice. There are various races held in Olympics as well from short distance to longer version. Ice hockey and bandy are team forms of speed skating in which two teams are competing against each other to put the disk in the goal.

Figure skating is defined as “Sport in which ice skaters, singly or in pairs, perform various jumps, spins, and footwork”(answers.com). It is a planned and carefully practiced sequence that includes elaborative steps compromising of footwork and spins. Figure skating can be performed singly or in pairs. It is a very famous form of ice-skating as many events including the Olympics have figure skating in them.

Ice Dancing, similar to figure dancing, is defined as a form of ice-skating in which “ice-skating pairs perform to music routines similar to ballroom dances.”(answers.com) The main difference between ice dancing and figure skating is that skaters are judged on the basis of their ability to dance with the melody of music and not allowed to use many physical and technical moves.