Your Winter Olympic quotient just went up

Twenty-five things you (probably) didn’t know about the Winter Games:

1 Olympic Village athletes do their own laundry.

2 To be included, a sport must be practiced in at least 25 nations.

3 Torch bearers, who paid $350 for the propane devices, were able to keep them when they were done.

4 NBC’s coverage of the opening ceremony attracted 67.5 million viewers, 17 million more than the Turin Games four years ago.

5 NBC’s Olympic fanfare is called “Bugler’s Dream.” Its conductor? John Williams. Its composer? Leo Arnaud.

6 Opening ceremony participant and narrator Donald Sutherland, who arrived in Vancouver on Tuesday evening from Los Angeles, is a winner of the Order of Canada, one of the nation’s highest honors.

7 Twenty-three U.S. team members are parents -- six moms, 17 dads.

8 Overall, nearly 40% of participating athletes are women.

9 How steep is the men’s downhill? Its vertical drop is greater than the combined heights of the Eiffel Tower and the Empire State Building.

10 To demonstrate how icy downhill courses are, TV analyst Billy Kidd once glided down part of a run in hockey skates.

11 In a recent poll, almost 60% of Vancouver residents said that the Olympics are a waste of money that could’ve gone to more important things.

12 83% said the Olympics are designed to benefit the rich.

13 Vancouver is sometimes referred to as “Vansterdam” for its live-and-let-live views on marijuana.

14 Squamish Indians still lived in Stanley Park, the city’s most prominent landmark, until 1935.

15 “O Canada,” one the world’s most stirring anthems, is believed to have been inspired by Mozart’s “Marsch der Priester” (March of the Priests).

16 Nikki Yanofsky, who belted out Friday’s jazzy rendition, is only in the 10th grade.

17 Eric Heiden, winner of five gold medals, is the team doctor for the U.S. speedskaters. His father, Jack, was also an orthopedic surgeon.

18 Figure skaters’ blades are a mere .15 inches thick, or about the diameter of a pencil eraser.

19 Six U.S. athletes have ties to the military; five are bobsledders.

20 At 463 pounds, the four-man sled weighs more than twice that of an average refrigerator.

21 U.S. halfpiper Shaun White was named for world champion surfer Shaun Tomson.

22 Only three cities put in bids for the 2018 Winter Games -- Munich; Annecy, France; and Pyeongchang, South Korea -- a clear sign of how economically challenging the Games have become.

23 Among the many ways the torch traveled on its 106-day journey: aboard a Zamboni.

24 U.S. skeleton team member Zac Lund was once suspended for using a banned hair replacement product. The drug has since been allowed. He is now bald anyway.

25 The youngest journalist covering the games is a 12-year-old Florida boy. The oldest is . . . well, probably me.

chris.erskine@latimes.com