In case you haven't been paying attention, the Winter Olympics is happening right now. I love it, and wouldn't you know it, I love another international competition of renown and ridiculousness as well. So, naturally, I'm trying to map air guitar to the various sports of the Winter Olympics. Let's see what we've got:
Alpine Skiing: It's fast! You need to stay in control or you'll just lose it entirely and crash and burn. Sure we all know about that. Another similarity with air guitar: it's something I wish I was better at.
Biathlon: Like biathlon, air guitar is something people in a specific subculture are passionate about, but everyone else either doesn't know, doesn't care, or thinks it's weird. Biathlon is huge in Russia. Maybe Your Daddy could shed some light on whether competitive air guitar is huge there too.
Bobsled: There's more to it than Cool Runnings! Specifically, there are a bunch of shirtless dudes. Just like air guitar: tons of shirtless dudes, also plenty of beards, and a movie about an underdog.
Cross-Country: While cross-country events take way longer than 1 minute, air guitar and cross-country can both feel like an eternity if it's boring. On the other hand, if it's exciting, you can really get sucked in, even if you expect it to be lame and stupid.
Curling: This one's obvious. Wearing exceptional pants is important in both sports. 
Also, drinking is legislated into the rules of curling (winner buys loser a beer), which is clearly something competitive air guitar needs to emulate.
Figure Skating: This one should also be obvious, considering that the air guitar scoring system out of 6.0 was lifted wholesale from figure skating (even though they don't use that system anymore, which kills me because now I don't understand what's going on).
Freestyle Skiing: Freestyle is actually really similar to air guitar in the scoring department, at least in the moguls discipline. Just like air guitar, there's a technical component - the skiier's turns, and also their speed down the run - as well as a style component with the jumps that maps to stage presence pretty well. Obviously your jumps (and tricks, in some of the other disciplines) have technical aspects as well but work with me on the analogy here.
Airness?
Hockey: Hockey is the best sport. Air guitar is also the best sport. Any questions?
Luge: This one might seem like a bit of a stretch, but bear with me. We know air guitar is all about world peace. And if you recall the Air Guitar World Championships halftime show, there was the video with the protest song about gay rights, directed pointedly at Russia (the "homohomohomo" song). So clearly we have a precedent for standing up against repressive regimes. Now, since the Olympics this year are in Russia and people are conflicted about enjoying the Games and supporting their favorite athletes vs. feeling like they're tacitly supporting the regime, there have been some public declarations of opposition from sponsors and other organizations. This one, featuring the 2-man luge, is awesome. And let's be fair, their statement about the Olympics always being a little gay can also be applied to our tight-pants-wearing, shirt-doffing, pelvic-thrusting sport.
Nordic Combined: ...I've got nothing. I don't even know why this is a thing.
Skeleton: Sledding down a hill face-first, inches from icy death, is fun and terrifying. Anyone have any opinions on what taking the stage at an air guitar competition is like? Maybe the stakes aren't as high... MAYBE.
Ski Jumping: This year, women are competing in Olympic ski jumping for the first time. Obviously, there's never been any official barrier to female competitors in air guitar, but everyone knows women have historically been less represented in the sport... up until last year. Last year was a huge year for the ladies! More female competitors than ever before, many of whom did really well. I'm only expecting those numbers to increase and those women to kick even more ass, just like with Olympic ski jumping.
Snowboarding: Do you know how many times the announcers talk about someone's air in this sport??
Speed Skating: Specifically the short-track kind; you're packing a lot of excitement into a really short time and emotions are high. With screaming fans and dramatic upsets, the whole thing is reminiscent of the big stage. The only difference is that there's a crowd on the ice in short-track, and things can get a little rowdy... so I guess it's kind of Freebird.
See? So, if you weren't much of an Olympics fan before (or not a real fan of the Winter games), now you have a reason to get excited. And if you're used to watching the Olympics but haven't ever seen competitive air guitar before, now you can put it all in context! And if that's you and you want to see some air guitar in action...
