WINTER OLYMPICS ARE A DIFFERENT BREED.

Byline: PAUL OBERJUERGE

TURIN, Italy - I like the Winter Olympics as much as the next guy. More. This is the sixth edition of the Winter Games I've covered as a journalist, going back to 1984, and they don't send me to these places at the point of a gun.

But even after all these years, after literally months of on-the-spot Winter Games exposure, I believe we have to make this concession:

This is a freak show.

What goes on at the Winter Games that you, as a Southern Californian, can relate to on a personal basis?

Ever slide down a luge run?

Been out cross-country skiing with a rifle slung over your shoulder?

You and the family been ski-jumping lately?

How is that double-axel coming? Got your 500-meter speedskate time under 40 seconds yet? Been over to the curling rink lately?

And it's not just those of us from summery climes to whom the entire Winter program seems exotic. No, bizarre. It's just about the whole planet.

That's one reason why much of the human race is not represented at the Turin Games. They don't really do winter sports in India, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Nigeria - just to name five nations on the world's top-10 most-populated list.

The Summer Games aren't remotely as ... remote. Nearly everyone runs and jumps. Many of us cycle, swim, throw and play soccer. Plenty of folks wrestle, box, tumble, shoot, lift, practice martial arts and ride horses. And none of those activities are limited by geography. Precious few are contingent on sophisticated equipment.

Some great athletes show up at the Winter Games. You bet.

But some of these guys ... you wonder how Olympian their talent really is.

Brazil has more soccer players than the planet has cross-country skiers. Cuba has more baseball players than the globe has full-time ice skaters.

The icy talent pool just isn't very deep.

You want to be an Olympian? Forget the Summer. Think Winter.

Move to Utah or Colorado Springs or Lake Placid and take up skeleton. Becoming the starting quarterback at your local high school probably is a longer shot than becoming the nation's top moguls skier.

Bonny Warner was a kid with drive and moxie. She was a decent field- hockey player at Chaffey High of Ontario. But by moving to Lake Placid in 1981 and committing herself to the luge, she became the country's best by 1984, and a three-time Olympian. Somebody had to do it.

Those five interlocking rings are a powerful lure. An overpowering lure to some. And those Olympics-intoxicated kids sometimes end up going for gold because they had the wit or moxie or desperation to take up a fringe sport.

The belief here is that an also-ran at the NCAA track meet could become a dominating Olympic short-track skater. A guy on an NFL reserve squad could rule long-track speedskating. Someone banging fenders at your nearest dirt track probably could get on the podium in bobsled. The 100th-place finisher at the Boston Marathon could kick butt and take names in cross-country skiing.

What is a little nutty is how many really random events are on the Winter program. To pad out the program, really.

The International Olympic Committee can't find room in the Summer Games for baseball and softball, sports played by tens of millions of people. But Nordic Combined is a Winter regular. And, what, maybe 200 people on Earth practice it?

None of this makes the Winter Olympics bad or pointless or a waste of your viewing time. It often is wonderfully entertaining, watching people slide around on snow and ice. Not something you see every Sunday afternoon.

NBC counted 88 million viewers for its first two nights of coverage. Clearly, we find something appealing about all this.

And maybe it's nice that semi-average Joes and Josephines can aspire to march in Winter's Opening Ceremonies - if they take up the right goofy ice sport before they get too old (or curling, if they have gotten too old).

But as elite athletes, no, we're not watching the creme de la creme. These guys aren't Ronaldinho or Maurice Greene or Peyton Manning or Sheryl Swoopes. They're not Kobe Bryant or Lindsay Davenport or Roy Jones Jr.

The pyramid of competition a Winter Olympian has to climb atop isn't very high. We're talking raw numbers here. Sometimes hundreds ... vs. hundreds of millions.

We like Winter Olympians. They are some of the nicest athletes you'll ever meet, and they often have some great stories because, often, they're fairly regular people.

They are masters of what they do because they, basically, joined the circus. They chose freakish.

They don't make much money, they are ignored three years out of four. Their payday comes each fourth February, when we sit and look at them and say, ``Hey, that Apolo Anton Ohno is really something special.''