Who could blame you? Who wouldn’t want the opportunity to represent your home country and have the chance to bring home a medal that can hang on your mantel forever?
There are, however, just a few problems. You’re either unathletic, out of shape, unmotivated or a combination of all three. Buzzkill, right? No!
While it may be too late to find glory this year, the next winter Olympiad is just four short years away in Russia. That gives you plenty of time to scheme your way onto an Olympic squad to get your shot at glory.
So in honor of those four short years, here are the four best ways you can win Olympic gold in 2014.
4. Purchase a skeleton sled
From what I can gather about this sport, the prerequisites for participating seem to be:
- Own a sled
- Be kind of crazy
As long as you fit the bill for No. 2, you need to go out and take care of No. 1.
In case you’re unfamiliar, the skeleton event is basically the luge, except instead of lying on your back, you lie on your stomach. Face-first. Down a track of ice. Going really fast. How fast? This fast:
Don’t get me wrong, this competition isn’t easy, but it seems to be the only Olympic sport in which you might be better off downing a six pack of Miller Lite beforehand. Bottom line: If you were that crazy kid in college who had a few adult beverages and built a makeshift Slip ‘n Slide or impromptu sledding ramp, I like your chances in this event.
3. Be the third-string goalie for Team Canada
Have you seen the Canadian hockey roster? The team is stacked beyond belief, particularly in net. The starting goalie is Mr. Canada, Martin Brodeur, who at 37 years old still may be the best goaltender on the planet. Behind him is a guy who won a Stanley Cup last season in Marc-Andre Fleury and a guy in Roberto Luongo who plays about 70 games a season.
Clearly, they’re not going to need all three of them. And though Brodeur likely won’t be around in Russia in 2014, they’ll most likely be stacked yet again.
That’s where you come in.
If you ever saw the movie Miracle (and if you haven’t, really, what’s wrong with you?) then you remember the depiction of backup goaltender Steve Janaszak. While Jim Craig stopped all those Soviet shots, there was Janaszak, sporting the white towel around his neck and watching from the bench.
Thirty years later, Stevey J. still has that gold medal, and he didn’t do much to earn it.
By convincing Team Canada to let you wear the towel in 2014, maybe you’re not guaranteed a gold, but the odds are in your favor to go home with at least the silver.
2. Become the third man or woman on a bobsled team
Not to pick on the downhill ice sledding events, but it’s just hard to imagine a four-person bobsled team couldn’t win a medal, even with some dead weight on board. Maybe the team would benefit from a lighter third member, or maybe a team would need some added girth on board, but somehow, some way, you and your teammates would make it to the bottom of the course.
For training, watch Cool Runnings between three and four times per day, get a killer spandex suit (make sure it fits), then memorize the track. To do this, you’ll have to think back to your Nintendo days. Remember the “Contra” code? Of course you do. Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start. The course is like that, only with no ups and no downs. How hard can that be?
As long as you are able to sit down and lean, you can be a contributing member of a bobsled team.
And yes, that rhymes and can be the song your team sings on the medal stand.
1. Join the curling team
It may be the obvious choice, but not without reason.
Obviously, it’s not easy to push “out of the hack” (thanks, Wikipedia!) and direct the 40-pound stone across a 150-foot sheet of ice into a bull’s-eye. That is some serious stuff. But sweeping? If you’ve ever had a stain you had to get out of your kitchen tiles, or if you’ve ever been assigned to broom duty in fourth grade, you can handle the sweeping.
The best part? You don’t even have to truly understand the strategy. If you need to sweep, someone yells at you to sweep. You don’t need to pore over the Wikipedia entry on curling that is somehow more than 9,200 words long. Shout, sweep. Shout, sweep. Shout. Sweep.
To the outside observer, no gold medal seems more attainable than the one hanging from the neck of the curling sweeper.
When you win, the celebrations are downright raucous, so be careful. You can’t afford to slip on the ice and injure your broom-sweeping hand — the next gold medal is just four years away.
