The Winter Olympics - an 'expert's' view

Despite it basically being a collection of increasingly madcap ways of getting down a frozen hill really, really fast, the Winter Olympics are something amazing.
Tales of triumph over adversity, the very real chance of catastrophic injury for the competitors, the glory, the very real chance of catastrophic injury for the competitors, the political animosity, the very real chance of catastrophic injury for the competitors, the back stories, the very real chance of catastrophic injury, the token athletes from countries where snow has only ever been read about and the very real chance of catastrophic injury for the competitors.
But the best thing about it is, much like the summer Games, you can become an 'expert' in the sports you are watching within 20 minutes of first tuning in.
Take, for example, the slopestyle snowboarding this morning which consisted of 12 very dude-ish dudes going down a massive hill very fast on a five-foot-long piece of plastic with an American dude out dude-ing all the over dudes to take home the gold medal.
At first, you watch it and have pretty much no idea what is going on. There are "frontsides" and "bolts" and "triples" and "1260s" and lots of blond hair in a whirlwind of snow, blue sky and over-excitable commentary.
The only two vaguely normal - and so, by extension, ridiculously incongruous- things witnessed were at one stage, someone knitting at the top of the slope and most of the boarders having their gloves tied to their jackets, like Dougal in Father Ted does.
To add to the confusion, the scoring system is stupid and subjective with judges marking the dudes down for slight technical deficiencies like issues with their shoulder position or maybe a hair is out of place or their jacket wasn't baggy enough or something.
Anyway, fast forward about a dozen jumps and you find yourself saying "Oh he didn't nail the bolt-on there; that will cost him" or "That was such an awesome triple" or "What a perfect rodeo". Being British, one then gets terribly embarrased.
The other thing about being British is you buy into backing your countrymen (one of whom was second at one point and so I got that horrible hopeful feeling and another who was competing without a cruciate ligament - an item of the human body I've always considered pretty important). Given they are British and this is the Winter Olympics, one imagines they probably train by buying a Hobby Craft-ful of that fake snow stuff at Christmas time and taking a trip to their local park.
But that is all the fun of the Games - lesser-known athletes enjoying themselves on the biggest stage after four years of hard work and the audience finding out more about sports they have never seen before and perhaps getting really into them. Like we didn't with Greco-Roman wrestling and synchronized swimming at London 2012...