Polling Place: Winter Olympic sports you enjoy most — and those you’d most fear trying

Speed skating on Day 1 of the Beijing Games.

We asked respondents to pick between figure skating, snowboarding, speed skating and alpine skiing, and guess what happened?

Americans love to watch figure skating. That’s what the experts tell us. Every four years at Winter Olympics time, we fall in love with tiny people on skates.

Hey, enough with the Alex DeBrincat cracks.

But in this week’s “Polling Place” — your home for Sun-Times sports polls on Twitter — we asked respondents to pick a favorite Olympic sport to watch between figure skating, snowboarding, speed skating and alpine skiing, and guess what?

Figure skating finished last.

Also: Commenters completely blew off the question.

“No curling option? Weak,” @Err_ick offered.

“Actually, bobsledding and luge are what I always look forward to,” @irishclover1952 shared.

And @recon5961 simply wrote, “Hockey.”

What a bunch of rabble-rousers you are. And we love you for it.

We also asked which of these sports — luge, skeleton, ski jumping or freestyle skiing aerials — you’d be most afraid to try. (Hint: There’s no wrong answer.) And we asked about the NFL’s Pro Bowl, which is upon us once again whether we give a cow’s hide or not. (Hint: We don’t.)

On to the polls:

Poll No. 1: Which of these Winter Olympic sports do you enjoy watching the most?

Upshot: Alpine skiing gets the nod, and it makes some sense when you think about an event such as the downhill — with no two runs alike and calamity in the air as competitors build up speeds that would get them pulled over on the Dan Ryan. But what stars Shaun White, Apolo Ohno, Michelle Kwan and Bonnie Blair were and are! OK, Mikaela Shiffrin, Lindsey Vonn and Bode Miller, too.

Poll No. 2: Which of these sports would you be most afraid to try?

Upshot: The people have spoken — loudly and clearly — and that’s fine. But just know there are some of us who’d sooner ski jump into an alligator-filled lake than strap onto a weenie little 4-foot sled and scream down an icy track head first, feet first or anything else first. Plus — hello — even the name “skeleton” implies something terrible is about to happen.

Poll No. 3: Your interest in Sunday’s NFL Pro Bowl, in a word?

Upshot: Look, not even the players care what happens in this game. Just don’t anybody get hurt out there, fellas. Meanwhile, @calenash2210 put it better than we could have: “I’m going to presume the 5% who said ‘keen’ don’t actually know what the word means.”

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