It's not often you get the chance to try out a Winter Olympic sport, so when given the opportunity to have a go at the relatively harmless pastime of curling, we were ready and willing.

BBC: Curling with Britain's sports minister

"In my opinion this is the greatest game of club football in the world, " Winter told BBC Sport.

BBC: SPORT | Football | FA Cup | Winter in wonderland

In the winter months especially, sport is a great divider.

BBC: Australia: What the rest of the world gets wrong

They would hike in the summer months and, in winter, pioneer the new sport of downhill or alpine skiing.

BBC: Swiss movement

Sport saw the Winter Olympics in Japan, the departure of Ruud Gullit from the manager's job at Chelsea and the rare sight of an England Test victory over the West Indies.

BBC: click on a month

At first, the Winter Games only featured the more established sport of Nordic skiing, but the growing love of downhill skiing resulted in the inclusion of Alpine skiing in the 1936 Winter Games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.

BBC: Where did skiing come from?

Oreiller was its resident snow showman in the 1940s -- a fearless adrenalin junkie who lived up to his nickname, and claimed skiing's first Olympic gold medals when the sport was introduced at the 1948 Winter Games.

CNN: Val d'Isere: The hidden home of skiing's 'madmen'

Make sure there are snow tires available for your vehicle before you buy it, says Cox, since there are a few high-performance sport sedans and sports cars for which no winter tires are made.

FORBES: Magazine Article

In the winter of 2008-2009, about three million middle class Chinese went skiing, a sport that was unavailable only 15 years before.

FORBES: China's Booming Consumer Market

The sport had a regional resurgence in the 1990s as advances in wet-suit technology made winter surfing more tolerable when East Coast surf generally is best and the Rockaways caught on as a hot spot, said Will Hallett, a Long Beach, N.

WSJ: Wipeout of Pier Is Blow to Town's Surf Scene