by Ellen Wanamaker

The Winter Olympic games have begun! From February 6 to 22, athletes from 93 countries will compete in 16 sports in venues across northern Italy. Events featured include the usuals: hockey, skiing, skating, and bobsled. Then there’s the obscure sports we see rarely: skeleton, freestyle skiing, snowboard cross, biathlon (my current obsession) and the newest winter Olympic sport: ski mountaineering. For that event, athletes use skins on skis to climb a mountain, then de-skin and zip down between gates like the downhill events.

Ames Public Library has books and movies to feed your curiosity about the Games, whether you’re a fan of figure skating, cross country skiing, or snowboard halfpipe. We have DVDs about the Olympics: Cool Runnings, about the Jamaican bobsled team, and Eddie the Eagle, about the intrepid ski jumper, to name a few. Kanopy (the library’s free movie streaming service) has a documentary called Adaptive Action Sports about athlete Amy Purdy and her achievements in snowboarding – and disability rights activism.

We have a coffee table book aptly titled Airborne that features snowboarder Shaun White defying gravity. The pictures make it look like he’s flying, which is not far from the truth. Most amazing to me is the image of a photographer, roped up and standing with feet flat against the vertical face of the halfpipe, shooting straight up while White hangs in the air above. A related book is Stephanie Loh’s Who is Chloe Kim? about the talented teenager whose athleticism, speed, style, and grit earned her a gold medal at the 2018 Games.

Oksana Masters’ autobiography The Hard Parts is her story of courage and triumph. She began her life in a Ukrainian orphanage with injuries stemming from the Chernobyl nuclear accident. Through the love of her adoptive family, and her own sheer tenacity, she became a multi-sport world champion in rowing, biathlon and cross-country skiing.

Maybe you want to relive the Miracle on Ice from the 1980 Olympics? Mike Eruzione’s Making of a Miracle tells the story of the hockey team captain, while Heather Williams’ Miracle on Ice is a book for kids with pictures about the team and it’s rise to fame.

There’s a lot of skating, skiing, sliding, flipping, shredding, and twirling action between now and the closing ceremonies. Catch the action on TV, or check out our Olympic related books at Ames Public Library. May the thrill of victory be with you!