Every winter Olympic sport ranked by how frequently your uncle thinks ‘I could do that’

13. Long track speed skating

Nearly everybody learned to skate during their youth or has been ice skating before at one mall or another. However, long track speed skating is much more than just simple ice skating. Long track speed skating is one of the competitions most entertaining — yet difficult — events.

It’s also one of the largest.

Long track speed skating spans a total of 14 days with events on 12 of the 14 days. The shortest event of long track speed skating spans 500 meters with the longest being 10,000 meters — or 6 miles. The men and women’s events include team and individual races of 1,000, 1,500, 3,000 meters and 5,000 meters as well as mass start and team pursuit. Skaters have reached speeds up to 37 miles per hour, making the event even more competitive and physically demanding.

The words long track are actually quite a turn off when it comes to speed skating. The phrase makes the task seem so much more difficult, which is why short track speed skating is easier to brag about. Speed skating at the local skating rink or at a nearby mall may seem fun, but in the big leagues, it’s serious. Speed skating anywhere from 500 to 10,000 meters is not something your uncle simply sets his beer down to compete in, it takes serious training.

Regardless of how many times your uncle claims to be able to compete in long track speed skating, he can’t. Unless he’s a world-class athlete and that’s a slim minority of us — but congrats to all of the world-class athlete uncles out there.