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Welcome to The Prompt’s own weekly NFL Power Rankings. Unfortunately we have run out of NFL for the season, but as luck would have it, the Winter Olympics are in full swing. With no sign of the pigskin, we are ranking the 10 Scariest Winter Olympic Events, for a novice to try.
1. Ski Jump
Ski jump starts with you climbing a set of steps you might find in Mordor. Next, you wiggle your cold, spandexed ass out onto a beam, like you are some kind of Depression-era Americana construction worker on lunch break posing for a photo. And that’s the easiest part.
You then ski down a hill so stupidly high, that its stupidity only competes with how stupidly steep it is. You go flying off it, gliding through the air, and praying for a nuke to go off so that you don’t have to land, hundreds of feet below, onto another stupidly steep hill. The goal is to travel the farthest, but absolutely secondarily to not breaking off both arms and legs.
Cost to get me to even try this event: $25,000,000 or the cost of potentially just being a torso for the rest of my life.
2. Skeleton
This is the headfirst, downhill, individual sled through the uncovered ice tube, at 80 mph. This is a CTE minefield, unless a bike helmet is going to prevent the likely catastrophic brain injury waiting for you at the finish line. You are basically a Plinko chip bouncing off barriers, except that you fall for a full minute and fewer audience members are cheering you on.
Also, your neck could snap, which would be in the chorus of Alanis Morissette’s “Ironic, Pt. 2” where you’d have no place to wear your precious gold medal. Also-also, you could fall off the sled and be sliced by the two machetes your sled rides atop.
Cost to get me to even try this event: $20,000,000 or the cost of enjoy all future meals through a straw.
3. Luge
Pretty much like the aforementioned skeleton, but feet first. You could make the case that who cares what side hits first when your body collides with a wall at 80 mph, but for my money, I’ll protect my brain. One luge advantage is that you could try to put your feet down and slow your sled with friction, as you would when you’re going too fast on a waterslide. I don’t think it would be very effective, but anything is worth a shot.
And not to get too grim, but an Olympic luger died on the Olympic luge course in Sochi. So that’s a real thing. You can LITERALLY go over the sides. Meanwhile, I can’t even stay on the track on Rainbow Road.
And just so we’re all clear here, you will not read about the bobsled on this list because bobsled is like flying first class on Emirates Air, compared to the luge or skeleton. I would rather ride the broken wood panel floating in the Atlantic, AFTER surviving the Titanic, than take one run on a luge.
Cost to get me to even try this event: $19,000,000 or the cost of a low-grade Iron Man suit.
4. Snowboard Big Air
The snowboard equivalent to the Ski Jump (See #1). This is the first year of Big Air is in the Olympics, and I am convinced this is one of the last events scheduled because people need to have free schedules for the eventual funerals.
Take that same big ramp, add in the same ludicrous starting height, and let the ever-dependable physics decide which way your body smashes the best. But this time you get to stand on one thicker board instead of two thin ones.
Cost to get me to even try this event: $18,000,000 or the cost of a lifetime stable of hand servants.
5. Snowboard Slopestyle
Remember that enormous jump in the Ski Jump? Of course you do. Well, slopestyle has 3 big jumps in a row, instead of one preposterous one. It is basically, would you rather fight 1 horse-sized duck or 3 duck-sized horses?
This year, a 17 year-old American, Red Gerard, spectacularly won this event, as a 33 year-old American, Josh Bard, frantically shit himself watching. Unlike the last few events, this one seems legitimately exhilarating when done correctly, and in the end, I don’t think Slopestyle is as paraplegic-y as others.
Cost to get me to even try this event: $13,000,000 or the cost of erasing all the public footage of me soiling myself.
HALFTIME
For inquiring minds, this is where I would slot boxing and judo, a hand-to-hand and foot-to-face combat sport that would surely leave me disfigured and disgraced. Boxing and judo are top two scariest events in the Summer Olympics.
6. Downhill skiing
This is the point where I am drastically less afraid of events literally killing me. Huzzah!
Downhill skiers go up to 90 mph on an icy ramp, using technologically aerodynamic versions of simple tools. Put me down for a never! All you need to see are Lindsey Vonn’s many scars, which NBC promos are all too glad to show off, to know what can happen when frail, mortal bodies hit solid, immortal objects.
Here’s a fun fact: There are mesh nets lining the course to catch limp bodies!
Cost to get me to even try this event: $8,500,000 or the cost of a beach house with an Acorn Stair Lift.
7. Moguls Skiing
I like to believe that the person who created moguls wondered, “What about downhill skiing but bumpy and if you fall, you feel like you are being punched 1,000 times by giant icy fists?”
For a novice, the best case for moguls skiing is two torn ACLs and two torn achilles. But I hear you can live a beautiful life without lateral movement these days. Worst case is likely that same pu pu platter of lower body injuries, with bonus concussions and a concave face.
Cost to get me to even try this event: $7,000,000 or the cost of Nicolas Cage/John Travolta Face/Off surgery.
8. Short Track Speed Skating (AKA a million tiny finger slicers)
I have a question: How important is it to you to have all 10 fingers? Because if it’s a low priority, short track speed skating may be the event for you. Take speed skating and pretend that the organizers never heard of a fire limit capacity. So now, if you fall–and you will, with 24 people flying by you–that is 48 Ginsu knives cruising past your precious hands as you lay, humiliated, on the ice. Would you ever stick your hand in a Slap Chop to see how sharp the blades are? Of course you wouldn’t.
This may be more of a vanity issue than a practical one, but I don’t need to be a part of some Sweeney Todd Roller Derby of Fleet Street.
Cost to get me to even try this event: $2,500,000 or the price of the best prosthetic fingers on the market (including labor).
9. Biathlon
Skiing to physical exertion seems like a real bummer, but doing it against other people who have guns and want to defeat you? HARD PASS. Oh, and just in case you are a billion percent sure that no one would ever shoot you in the biathlon, don’t forget, you could always shoot yourself by accident.
Cost to get me to even try this event: $1,000,000 or the lump payout of a life insurance policy.
10. Pairs Figure Skating
We’ve hit the point where the emotional devastation is equal to or greater than the physical one. Welcome to pairs figure skating, or as I like to call it, “The one where they figure skate and throw each other into the air.”
My body fits into the tremendous grey area between “Being strong enough to throw another human being” and “Being light enough to be thrown by another human being” rendering me phenomenally useless in this sport. But there is always the lycra… and the rhythm, neither of which suit me.
Cost to get me to even try this event: $200,000 or enough to pay for a one year mental health sabbatical.
Also receiving votes: Ice Hockey, Bobsled, Curling, Ice Dancing, Bills Mafia.
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