Ice - Sports

A winter sport is a sport commonly played during winter. it refers to a sport played on snow or ice. it can refer to sports played in winter that are also played year-round, such as basketball. The main winter sports are ice hockey and figure skating, sledding events, such as luge, skeleton and bobsleigh, skiing (Alpine and Nordic) and snowboarding. Other common winter sports include skiboarding, monoskiing, skwal and snowmobiling. Speed skating or speedskating is a competitive form of skating in which the competitors race each other in travelling a certain distance on skates. Types of speedskating are long track speedskating, short track speedskating, inline speedskating (or "inline racing"), marathon speed skating and quad speed skating. In the Olympic Games, long track speedskating is usually referred to as just "speedskating", while short track speedskating is known as "short track". [For example, see [http://www.nbcolympics.com/index.html NBC's Olympics coverage] ] The ISU, governing body of both ice sports, refers to long track as "speed skating" and short track as "short track speed skating".

Long track speed skating is performed on ice. It is one of two Olympic forms of the sport and the one with the longest history. An international federation was founded in 1892, the first for any winter sports. The sport enjoys large popularity in the Netherlands and Norway. There are top international rinks in a number of other countries, including Canada, the United States, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, China and Russia. A World Cup circuit is held with events in the two countries, and with two events in Thialf, the ice hall in Heerenveen, Netherlands.

The sport is described as "long track" in American usage because a 400m oval is used, as opposed to a 111m oval on a hockey rink in short track skating. Races are exclusively held as time trials, with skaters starting in pairs or, in lower-level racing, in quartets. The skaters do one inner curve and one outer curve on each lap, changing on the back straight. There is thus no real need to standardise the inner radius of each curve, as long as the length of an outer plus an inner plus two straights equals 400 metres. The International Skating Union rules allow some leeway in the size and radius of curves.