The 17-night TV binge known as the Winter Olympics starts Friday with colorful opening ceremonies in Sochi, Russia. The international competition, held every four years, has 98 events in 15 winter sport categories. Among the most popular are snowboarding, hockey, ski jumping, figure skating and ice dancing. Eighty-eight countries are participating, including 230 from the U.S. – the largest delegation.

America’s youngest competitor is 15-year-old freestyle skier Maggie Voisin. Better-known members of Team USA include snowboarders Kelly Clark and Shaun White, skiers David Wise, Mikaela Shiffrin, Hannah Kearney and Bode Miller, hockey captain Zach Parise, speed skater Shani Davis and figure skaters Gracie Gold (who’s 18), Meryl Davis and Charlie White. America won 37 medals at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia -- the most ever by one nation at a single Winter Games.

Security is ultra-tight because Sochi (pronounced SO-chee) isn’t that far from Russia’s restive North Caucasus region, considered a hotbed of Islamic terrorism. Two bombings Dec. 29 and 30 killed dozens in the Russian city of Volgograd, about 400 miles from Sochi. An Islamic group claimed responsibility and vowed more attacks in Sochi. Russian President Vladimir Putin vows to insure safety and is deploying what’s called the largest Olympics security force ever – 100,000 people, drones, warships and surface-to-air missiles. "We have never seen the type of security that we are now seeing in Russia at any prior Olympic Games in terms of the credentialing, surveillance and amount of resources that have been committed,” says executive Gary Zenkel of NBC, which has U.S. broadcast rights.

Athlete says: “It’s not about racing to beat somebody, but skiing the mountain the way it is meant to be skied.” – Mikaela Shiffrin, 18, skier from Vail, Colo.

Author says ” Many of the 120,000 persons expected to visit the Olympics do not realize that they are walking into what effectively is a war zone.” -- David Satter, U.S. expert on Russia

TV executive says: "You're going to see more specialty cameras than ever before. And many of them really single out action sports like the snowboarding, like the aerial skiing and the moguls." – Jim Bell, NBC Sports executive producer