Ladies and gentlemen, it’s already time for the Olympics. That’s right, in a few short days, on February 4th, the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics will begin. Make sure you have access to the right channels, all the recipes are ready for the watch parties, and your fantasy team is drafted…
Wait, fantasy team? Yeah, that’s right, fantasy team. It might seem overly complicated and too much work to set up, but I promise you, it’s not, and it’s worth it. Until I discovered this way of participating in the Olympics from home, I never watched curling, speed skating, or Nordic skiing. Last Winter Olympics, however, in 2018, I watched nearly every event there was, for one simple reason, I had some skin in the game.
There’s two websites you can use to help you create a league. The first is Fantasy Olympian. I won’t get too deep into the rules for either website, as there are a lot, but I’ll give a brief summary. On Fantasy Olympian, each team has a total of 10 athletes and 1 tiebreaker country. Three points are assigned for gold medals, two for silver, and one for bronze. Whichever manager has the most points on their team at the end of the 2022 Winter Olympics, wins the league.
The second website, which I almost prefer, is Fantasy Olympics. You can either select a pick’em league, or a draft league, and either focus on athletes or countries. If you select a pick’em league, you pick whoever you want, and everyone else does the same. If you pick a draft league, a standard snake draft occurs. An athlete focus means the competition will function quite similarly to the previous website. However, a country focused league has team managers select a country for each of the fifteen sports. Say, for instance, you selected Norway for speed skating. If a Norwegian earns gold in a speed skating event, your team earns 3 points. It doesn’t matter who that Norwegian is, as long as they are on Team Norway.
So what are my tips? Well, I’m not going to give away too much, just incase anyone in my league is reading this, but I will give you one very helpful clue, assuming your sticking with Fantasy Olympics‘ nation format. Don’t immediately draft the sports you enjoy the most. Several people in my group made the mistake of instantly drafting Canada for hockey or the United States for figure skating. The issue with those two sports comes down to the number of opportunities for medals. There’s only two podiums with hockey, the men’s podium, and the women’s podium. That means if, straight out of the drafting gate, select Canada for hockey, you only have the opportunity to earn points twice through that sport. Other sports, however (I’m not going to say which ones, once again for my own safety), have a ton more medal opportunities.
So now’s the time to gather a group of friends, figure out how much they each need to put into the pot, and decide upon a punishment for last place. For the 2022 Winter Olympics, don’t just watch, participate. Fear losing. Nab some cash from your friends. Have some fun this year. Trust me, it’s a great time.
Image Credits: The Olympic Games on Instagram
