The Winter Olympics and Literature...An Unlikely Combination?

Today I have enjoyed reading an article by John Dugdale on the Guardian website about the seemingly surprising connections between winter sports and fiction. Dugdale's inventive feature comes in the wake of the opening of the Sochi Olympics and authors' protests over the creative 'choke hold' created by Putin's anti-gay and blasphemy lays. Though literary giants like Salman Rushdie and Margaret Atwood have spoken out against this controversial legislation, Dugdale's article takes a break from intense political debates about freedom of expression and attempts to enlighten us to the unexpected legacy of winter sports in fiction.

Firstly, there is of course the ice skating that takes place on frozen river in Louise May Alcott's Little Women. This is an episode which Dugdale interprets as speed skating since Laurie and Jo are racing and leave Amy behind when she falls through the ice. Don't forget that ice skating also features in The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger, as Holden Caulfield agrees to take Sally to Radio City for a spot of skating.

Dugdale also identifies James Bond's potential Olympic prowess in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, as the spy executes slalom, biathlon and skeleton skilfully. The following cover demonstrates Bond's ability to ski and shoot a gun at the same time, which probably undermines the dangerous nature of the Olympic skiing events currently on show in Sochi.

Poetry, of course, has a fair share of winter sports as well. T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land features some bobsleigh action, as an Austrian countess recalls fun in the snow before the war: "... he took me out on a sled, / And I was frightened. He said, Marie,/ Marie, hold on tight. And down we/ went". Robert Burns' also explores the peculiar sport of curling in 'Tam Samson's Elegy'.

So, winter sports do have a legacy in literary history...who'd have thought it?

(A link to Dugdale's article can be found in the first paragraph).