Located in a prime region for winter sports and hosting some of the country’s most able skiing students, Cambridge certainly lives up to its reputation as a world-leading snow sports university. With Castle Hill providing a superb location for international championships, nearby ski training and guaranteed snow all year round, skiing at Cambridge beats rowing every day.

Sarcasm aside, skiing and snowboarding are some of the most popular pastimes of Oxbridge students. Come 2014, they, along with the rest of the world, will be turning their attention to Sochi, Russia, where the Winter Olympics will be taking place. Events will run from the 7th to 23rd of February in a range of disciplines including ice hockey, bobsled and the most extreme event of all, curling.

If all of this sounds beyond exciting to you, then why not give it a go in Cambridge as well? Join the University Ski and Snowboard Club or the Ice Hockey Club for some local winter sports action. 

Alpine Ski Racing
Alpine ski racing has traditionally been the main event at the Winter Olympics. Once again, favourites Bode Miller, Lindsey Vonn and Marcel Hirscher will be competing across five disciplines. Downhill, the fastest and most exhilarating discipline, will be the most exciting watch, with racers hitting speeds of 120 miles plus per hour, flying off 60 metre jumps and carving down icy slopes. Look out for Mikaela Shiffrin in the women’s slalom, Ted Ligety in the men’s giant slalom and the Italians Christof Innerhofer and Dominik Paris in the downhill.

Skiing Slopestyle
For the first time in history, Olympic skiing will now include slopestyle. For the last decade there has been growing participation and interest in this trick-jumping discipline. Slopestyle is now one of the highlights of the winter sport calendar, and with Simon Dumont, famous for boosting huge airs in the X Games superpipe, and Jon Olsson, famous for wowing the big air crowd, among others set to compete, the Sochi slopestyle event is sure to provide extreme entertainment.

Curling
Those of you who are already using zimmer frames to get to lectures and have mental age scores of seventy from Facebook quizzes may well get a kick from watching the curling event. We recommend a nice cup of chamomile tea and an electric blanket while viewing the qualifying rounds.

Ice Hockey
Ice hockey is the fastest-paced and arguably the hardest hitting collision sport in the world. Professionals are allowed to compete at the Olympics, which adds considerable attraction to the hockey event, combining national pride with pro-league favourites. The 2014 Winter Games in Sochi will be seen by the majority of ice hockey fans as a time of reckoning. The major powerhouses of this sport – Canada, the US, Sweden and Russia – equally want and expect to win, and nothing short of a gold medal will be satisfactory.

Cambridge University Ski and Snowboard Club
If you feel that watching skiing is not enough, join the Cambridge University Ski and Snowboard Club. Their highly-attended weekly training sessions at the Milton Keynes Snow Centre cater to both racers and freestylers. So whilst Cambridge may not be an international snow sport capital, winter sports aficionados still have their place here. Join now in time to hone those skills for the Varsity trip, or else continue improving once you’ve come back from Tignes. Contact President JP Espinosa (jpe32) for more information.

Cambridge Ice Hockey Club
If you are impressed by the speed, pace and physicality of ice hockey then give the University club a go. There is a long-standing Cambridge connection to the game, since the Oxford-Cambridge rivalry is the longest one in the ice hockey world, dating back to 1885. The Cambridge team are the current Varsity champions, having demolished the Dark Blue opposition last year. They train in Peterborough and are still looking for players with previous experience. Contact Captain Jaason Geerts (jmg201) for more information.