The 2014 Winter Olympics will be held in Sochi, Russia from February 7th through the 23rd. This year there will be 81 nations sending over 2,500 athletes to compete in 98 events in 15 sports. This is the first time Russia will be hosting the Olympics since the 1980s. Sochi is the third largest region in Russia with a population of 400,000 people.

The USA teams will be competing in 11 out of the 15 sports including biathlon, bobsled, curling, figure skating, ice hockey, luge, short track speed skating, skeleton, skiing, snowboarding and speed skating. In the previous winter Olympics USA Hockey won a silver medal. This year the USA hockey team have 13 forwards, seven defense men and three goalies. For an athlete, making the Olympic team is a challenging but a huge honor. An athlete is deemed worthy of competing in the Olympics based on their age, how many years they have been playing, and their performance in previous Olympics.

The United States has already begun the hype for Team USA. The Road to Sochi kick off started on October 29th in Time Square hosted by Liberty Mutual Insurance. The celebration will continue with 12 more events across the country between November 2013 and February 2014.

Olympian Shaun White held his gold medal in the half pipe in 2010 and took on the name “flying tomato”, he also has an advanced snowboarding trick named after him called “Tomahawk.” Shaun White is also an eight time super pipe champion in the Winter X games.
Short-track speed skating champion Apolo Anton Ohno had won a record eight medals for the USA in 2006 and 2010. He had been training since he was 14 for the Olympics. Ohno also had competed and won the fourth season of Dancing with the Stars.

Hopefully all of these star athletes of the Olympic games continue to bring the USA to victory during the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia.