It all kicks off on Friday, the skiing, skating, slithering and jumping which go to make up the XXII Winter Olympics in the usually sunny but hopefully snowy Black Sea resort of Sochi; the most expensive and controversial Games in history.

A lot of time, money and effort has gone into making Team GB the best prepared and most ambitious ever to embark on such an expedition. We must hope it will be worth it.

The problem is, we in Britain just don't seem to take the Winter Olympics seriously - that is until we start winning medals. And there have been precious few of them.

True, some 24 million, one of the UK's highest-ever viewing figures, watched Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean Bolero their way to sporting immortality at Sarajevo 30 years ago. And Rhona Martin's curlers kept us glued bleary-eyed to the box as they rolled their stones to gold in Salt Lake City in 2002.

Rhona Martin (right) kept British eyes open into the early hours as she led her team of curlers to Olympic glory in Salt Lake City ©Getty Images



But by and large winter sports are seen as more fun than Games. Certainly in the eyes of TV producers.

A perfect example of this has been Channel 4's winter sports reality show The Jump, which  seems to have left viewers and critics cold.

There was no doubting the courage of the contestants and the hazards involved - Sir Steve Redgrave had to retire hurt nursing a broken hand and badly bruised ribs.

At least the Olympic rowing legend had sports cred - but the sight of so many C-list showbiz sorts pratfalling on skis and skates hardly whetted the appetite for the real thing to come.

The redoubtable Redgrave stood out in a motley mix which included a bearded comic, an ex-cricketer, a celebrity hairdresser, a long-forgotten TV presenter and a Pussycat Doll.

Over a week, this bunch of frost-bitten tyros tried their luck at the bobsleigh, skeleton, skiing and speed-skating with the worst pair having to perform a ski jump-off under the enthusiastic tutelage of Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards.

Eddie 'The Eagle' Edwards guided contestants on The Jump in the art of ski jumping, after his own efforts won him a legion of fans at Calgary 1988 ©AFP/Getty Images


It was eventually won by the 2009 X Factor victor Joe McElderry, a singer who is openly gay. Just as well he is not performing in Sochi then.

The Jump never really took off. Sadly it was downhill all the way.

As one caustic TV reviewer put it: "A lot of cold frantic, solitary sports that force contestants to dress up as Power Rangers and leave viewers with no idea what they are watching. There's only one thing worse than skilled professionals doing them at breakneck speed and that's some bungling amateurs doing them very slowly."

He added: "The Winter Olympics may be great fun to take part in but they're pretty lousy to watch."

Clearly this chap has an ice chip on his shoulder which won't thaw out when the BBC, with not far off twice the number of personnel (96 at the last count) deployed to cover the Games than GB have competitors, begin their own daily transmissions this weekend. These start at 7am on with an hour-long highlights programme starting at 7pm.

No doubt the Beeb are anxious that this coverage will be received somewhat less light-heartedly and that by the end of the 17 days shivering Britain will have learned to love the Winter Olympics.

In addition to 200 hours of network TV coverage presented by Clare Balding, Hazel Irvine and Jonathan Edwards, there will also be more than 650 hours of live action via six HD streams.

Then 2010 skeleton gold medalist Amy Williams and former Olympians Graham Bell, Colin Bryce, Emma Carrick-Anderson, Robin Cousins, Jackie Lockhart and Wilf O'Reilly will be among the luminaries assembled to impat their expertise in the hope of converting the muiltitude who know little about winter sports and care even less.

So it seems rather surprising that BBC 2 are supplementing the serious stuff with an accompanying programme hosted by comedian Alan Davies. Apres- Ski will air on Fridays at 10pm when Davies promises "to take a comic look at the news and action  of the Winter Olympics."

Or in other words, take the piste...

Alan Tyler, BBC Executive Editor for Entertainment Commissioning, says: "Alan is one of the best comic performers in the UK and a huge sports fan. We are delighted he is fronting what will be a fun take on a huge sporting event."

Oh dear! I fear the worst.

However this Friday it would be no surprise if both this suspect show and live coverage of the Opening Ceremony are eclipsed in terms of viewer appeal by a third BBC2 Winter Games offering.

Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean on their way to perfection in Sarajevo 1984 ©Getty Images



I strongly suspect more of us will be inclined to watch Torvill & Dean: The Perfect Day which airs at 9pm. In this hour-long long documentary, the iconic couple recall the events leading up to their gold medal winning performance on Valentine's Day 1984.

Six days later they will again dance on ice to recreate the same Bolero routine in the very place where it originated.

This follows a joint invitation from the mayors of Sarajevo and East Sarajevo to visit the city to mark the 30th anniversary of the great event. They will skate in the same stadium, originally called the Olympic Hall Zetra which was destroyed in the 1992-95 Bosnian war but rebuilt in 1999 and renamed Olympic Hall Juan Antonio Samaranch, after the former President of the International Olympic Committee.

Money raised from the performance will be used in Sarajevo to build a permanent ice rink, ahead of the 2017 European Youth Winter Olympic Festival.

"It will be an emotional day," says Torvill.  "To return to the place which provided such a life-changing moment for us will be an exciting and rewarding way to mark the 30th anniversary."

What T&D did then was a thing of beauty, but we should not overlook the fact that there is also ugliness in the real dangers lurking both on the ice  and in the mountains of Sochi.

Whatever the TV satirists might suggest. the Winter Olympics are no snow joke.

The safety of competitors in their particular disciplines must be as much a concern for the Russian hosts as the threat of terrorist attacks.

The death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili during a practice run in Vancouver 2010 is only too vivid in recent memory ©AFP/Getty Images



The grim shadow of the stricken Michael Schumacher hangs over winter sports which, lest we forget, contain more hazardous pursuits than any in the Summer Games.

The death of 21-year-old Nodar Kumaritashvili, a Georgian luge slider competing at the Vancouver Olympics, who crashed during a training run and hit a metal pole, is only to vivid in recent memory.

And Franz Klammer, one of the greatest-ever Olympic downhillers, has created a Foundation devoted to caring for the many youngsters badly injured in skiing accidents.

This week concerns have been raised by several snowboarders over the safety of the slopestyle course after training runs. They claim it is  "pretty dangerous" and warn of potential injuries, urging improvements before the competition starts.

Make no mistake, lives will be risked in Sochi in all sorts of ways; good reason to view these Winter Olympics and those who compete in them with respect and admiration rather than as a bit of a giggle.

Alan Hubbard is an award-winning  sports columnist for The Independent on Sunday and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered a total of 16 Summer and Winter Games, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and  world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire.