Do you fancy travelling feet-first at around 130km/h down an icy track with another human being lying on top of you? That's an Olympic event (doubles luge). What about skiing down a huge ramp and flinging yourself into the air? Austrian ski jumper Thomas Morgenstern, three-time Winter Olympic champion ski jumper, knows just how dangerous that is, because he was hospitalised this January after a serious crash and has worked ridiculously hard to ensure that he even got the all-clear to compete. Seriously, watch the footage above and you'll have a new appreciation of just what these athletes are risking in pursuit of gold.
12. Inappropriate Musical Choices
All of the figure skating routines are set to music, and playing a quick game of 'what's that tune?' often yields surprising results. While the classics such as Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker are still popular, the 15 year old Russian Yulia Lipnitskaya controversially chose to set her routine to John Williams' soundtrack from Schindler's List. Oddly, the film's theme has been used by figure skaters quite often since its 1993 release, because apparently figure skating is the natural medium to channel the horrors of Nazi Germany.