Haven't signed into your Scholastic account before?
Teachers, not yet a subscriber?
Subscribers receive access to the website and print magazine.
You are being redirecting to Scholastic's authentication page...
Announcements & Tutorials
Explore our NEW Text Set: Celebrating Black History and Voices!
How Students and Families Can Log In
1 min.
Setting Up Student View
Sharing Articles with Your Students
2 min.
Interactive Activities
4 min.
Sharing Videos with Students
Using Scholastic News with Educational Apps
5 min.
Join Our Facebook Group!
Exploring the Archives
Powerful Differentiation Tools
3 min.
Planning With the Pacing Guide
Subscriber Only Resources
Access this article and hundreds more like it with a subscription to Scholastic News magazine.
Skeleton athletes wear helmets for safety.
Julian Finney/Getty Images
Article Options
Presentation View
Let the Games Begin!
The world is coming together in China for the Winter Olympic Games.
Get ready for flips, twists, and twirls. The Winter Olympics kick off on February 4 in Beijing, China, and it will last 17 days. Thousands of the best athletes from countries around the world will compete there, including about 200 Americans.
“We have athletes who won gold medals in the last Olympics,” says Mike Jankowski, a head coach for the United States. “They are ready to try their best to win again.”
Jamie Squire/Getty Images
Figure skating has been a Winter Olympic sport since 1924.
Racing Downhill
Many Olympic sports take place on mountains. For example, Alpine skiing, or downhill skiing, is one of the most well-known Olympic events. Skiers face sharp turns and big jumps as they race to reach the finish with the fastest time.
Luge, bobsled, and skeleton are sliding sports. In skeleton, athletes lie facedown on small sleds. They rocket downhill at speeds of up to 90 miles per hour—head first!
Jean Catuffe/Getty Images
Brooms are important in the sport of curling.
High-Flying Tricks
Snowboarding is a newer Olympic sport. It made its debut at the 1998 Olympics. The halfpipe event takes place on an icy, U-shaped course. Snowboarders earn points by doing tricks, like flips and going backward.
Another snow sport, freestyle skiing, has the nickname “hotdogging.” One of the 13 freestyle events is called big air. Skiers fly off jumps. They try to go high and far, all while doing flips and spins.
Erick W. Rasco/Sports Illustrated via Getty Images
To go fast, speedskaters bend close to the ice and swing their arms.
Competing on Ice
Ice hockey, speed skating, figure skating, and curling are held indoors. Curling has teams of four people. A player slides a stone toward a target. The other players sweep the ice with brooms to help the stone slide farther.
Coach Jankowski knows all the athletes have trained hard for the Olympics. “It is such an honor to represent the USA on the world stage,” he says. “It’s an awesome feeling to be working together as a team to do our best for America.”
What Are the Olympic Rings?
lazyllama/Shutterstock.com
Created more than 100 years ago, the Olympic rings are a symbol of unity. The five rings stand for the five continents that came together for the 1912 Olympics.
The rings are blue, yellow, black, green, and red. Those five colors combined with a white background were found on the flags of all nations at that time.