The Winter Olympics serve a very important purpose for many sports fans.
Beyond proving who the best athletes in the world truly are, the Games shine a light on sports that get limited run most of the time. In three Februarys out of four, ski jumping and nordic combined and curling are typically relegated to fringe channels lumped into a cable package no one truly wants.
But every four years, the tangled masses get to watch the excruciating effort of cross country skiing or the unassuming precision of curling on a national spotlight.
That’s the backdrop that makes people like Jessie Diggins and Kikkan Randall guests on the TODAY show and allows a quintet of dad-bodded goofballs to throw out the first pitch at a Major League Baseball game.
There’s so much more to watch than just Team USA in this year’s event in Beijing. Here are the names you should be familiar with from teams outside the 50 states at the 2022 Winter Olympics.
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