Olympic Winter Games and their popularity

I don't know how it is in other countries, but here in Belgium winter games are absolutely not popular. The reason?

Well, for starters, we are not a wintersport country. We do have some (low) hills, and sometimes you can ski on them, but it's nothing compared to the Alps or the Pyrenees. So we don't have any skiers worth mentioning, who can compete in the downhill and the slalom.

Also we didn't have skating rinks a decade or so ago. The Dutch have had them for a whole lot longer, that's why they are so good in this sport. Recently we have Bart Swings, who is a skeeler world champion, but who now tries to do as well in speed skating. On the 5000 m he came in fourth, even when this is not his best discipline. We can only hope for a medal when he does the 1,500 m, which is his forte.

Slowly our bobsleigh girls are becoming more popular Their two-women team is getting better and better by each race they take. They say the track in Sochi suits them, so there is also (a bit of) hope they'll end withing the top eight.

That being said, our national tv doesn't give the games a lot of attention. Only during the 7 o'clock news they give two or three minutes of the events in Sochi.

All in all, I think winter games are less popular than summer games. A reason could be that winter sports are more of an elite thing than cycling or soccer. In the late 19th century and the first 50 years of the 20th, only rich people could afford to spend time in winter resorts and practice sports there. I know my whole class was jealous when my parents took me skiing when I was only 6 years old. (My mum spent a winter in Switzerland during the second world war and that is where she learned to ski.) We were considered privileged kids because we could afford to go on a holiday more than once a year, and always abroad.

My sister, by the way, could have become a ski champion. In the resort we used to frequent, she often took part in the yearly race for gold for the children of the village - we were friends with the daughters of the hotel, so we could take part in it as well - and she always ended up first, with compliments of the boss of the ski school.  But alas, my parents weren't that rich to allow their daughter to stay all winters in Switzerland and train with the national team. Nowadays, she would have got a grant from the government, but in those days it was unthought of.