So after four unbearable years, it’s back. No, I’m not talking about the presidential elections or some other event that happens every four years; I’m talking about the Winter Olympics, or more commonly known as the Summer Olympics’ younger, less loved brother. The Olympic Winter Games, or Winter Olympics for short, were first played in 1924 in the French town of Chamonix. More than 200 athletes competed in its sixteen winter themed events that ranged from cross-country skiing to speed skating. The favorites, Norway and Finland, both left with 4 gold medals apiece while the US was only able to win one. 82 years later (or 20.5 four year periods later, that makes sense), the twentieth Winter Olympics will be played in the Italian city of Turin (even though it is called the Torino Olympics, which also makes sense) from Today (Feb. 10)- Feb. 26. Don’t worry; there are mascots in these Olympics, two of them! Neve, a female snowball and Gliz, a male ice cube that are sure to make this year’s Olympics even more exciting than ever. If that isn’t exciting enough, there will be approximately 211 athletes from the United States playing, and there still doesn’t seem to be much interest in the minds of Ames High students. Why don’t the Ames High students get excited for the Winter Olympics? “I don’t really care about the Winter Olympics, it’s kind of like a parked car, it’s there, but I couldn’t care less about it.” Said junior Kunal Patel. The similarities of the Winter Olympics and a parked car are almost endless. Both can happen in the winter, both are bigger than a breadbasket, the list goes on and on. “It’s not that I dislike the Winter Olympics, it’s just that the Winter X-Games happen right before the Olympic games and I’m pretty sure a game with an X before it is automatically better.” Said junior Brandon Hurley. This is also a valid point. This year’s Winter X-Games happened from Jan. 27-31 and includes more “extreme” games with cooler names than the Winter Olympics. For example, the snowmobile events of the X-Games have fantastic names like: HillCross, SnoCross, Junior SnoCross, and UltraCross. If you still care about the Winter Olympics, then this final idea should change your opinion. “I would actually consider giving the Winter Olympics, but I keep remembering how other countries, like the French, end up cheating and ruining the whole event.” Said Patel. Ever since the Athens’ games a really long time ago, there has been cheating. Whether it has been stealing the opponent’s sandals (which might have happened in the Athens’ games) or unfair scoring (which definitely did happen in the Salt Lake City games), in pretty much every Olympics, someone ends up ruining it for everyone else. So whether you don’t care about the Winter Olympics because it’s like a parked car, because the X-Games are better, because people cheat, or some other reason (like the fact that countries near the equator have an unfair disadvantage), most people that attend Ames High can agree that the Winter Olympics are a waste of both time and space.