Fifth Grade
Worksheets
2002 Winter Olympics
Caption: Vonetta Flowers (left) and Jill Bakken power up in the push zone for their 80-mile-an-hour ride down the Winter Olympic bobsledding track. Bakken, the driver, and Flowers, the brakeman, won the first gold medal presented in Olympic women's bobsledding Feb. 19, 2002.
The United States won big at the 2002 Winter Olympics. That year, athletes from the United States won thirty-four medals including ten golds. This was way more than the U.S. had won before, and it put the U.S. among the big winners of the 2002 games.
There was plenty of tough competition. Seventy-seven nations competed in the 2002 games held in Salt Lake City, Utah. So why did the United States win so big this time?
Some people said it was due to the new events added to the Olympic lineup. Several new "extreme" sports had been added to the Olympics in the 1990s, including short track speed skating, snowboarding, and freestyle skiing. An old sledding event known as skeleton was reintroduced. There were also two new women's events - ice hockey, which was added in the previous Winter Olympics, and bobsledding, which was new in 2002. The United States won lots of medals in these newer competitions.
Extreme sports were once viewed by many as showing off, as too dangerous, or even as fake sports, but that viewpoint had changed in recent Winter Olympics. By 2002, extreme sports were viewed as a great way to attract more athletes and a young audience. Extreme sports athletes were some of the stars of the 2002 Winter Olympics.
