When American speed skater Tucker Fredricks competed at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, his parents were there to watch from the stands. When he competed at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, his parents were there to watch him skate in person again.
But when Fredricks takes the ice this February for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, his parents will be half a world away, watching on TV from their hometown of Janesville, Wisc. The reason? Fears over safety and security at the Games made Fredricks ask his parents to stay away.
See also: Figure Skater Jason Brown: Viral Fame Is 'Mind-Blowing'
“Tucker said he doesn't want to worry about us or about security,” his father, Dan, told the Janesville Gazette this week.
But Fredricks is far from the only Olympian to recently tell loved ones not to make the trip to Sochi since terrorists have threatened to strike the Games. At least four NHL players — who play for the American, Canadian and Swedish national teams — have also said they don't want family and friends at the Olympics, according to an Associated Press report. Each player cited safety fears as at least part of the reason they told people to stay home.
"It's nerve-wracking, that's for sure. I guess there's no way around it," Minnesota Wild and Team USA forward Zach Parise told the AP. "I watch the news. I see that stuff going on. It's not very comforting."
Even for athletes who will bring loved ones, there are concerns. Elana Meyers of the U.S. women's bobsled team will bring just her father and fiance to Sochi. Part of the reason for the small entourage, Meyers told Mashable in an email, is that her father (a former Marine) and fiance are the family members best equipped to handle an emergency situation.
"I think all of us are a bit nervous," Meyers told Mashable, "and most people have a smaller contingency than they would if the games were in a safer area, but we are trying to focus on competing the best we can for our country."
The United States Olympic Committee (USOC) this week received an emailed threat warning of a terrorist attack during the Sochi Games, which begin Feb. 7. The national Olympic committees for Germany, Hungary, Italy, Slovakia and Slovenia received similar threats. The International Olympic Committee deemed the threats "not real" on Wednesday, but the ominous emails only added to mounting concerns about the safety of fans, athletes and media in Sochi.
Concerns over safety are real. Last summer, Doku Umarov, a Chechen rebel warlord who has been called "Russia's bin Laden" in many news reports, called upon Islamic separatists to strike the Sochi Games. He was reportedly killed this month by Russian special forces (Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov announced the killing on Instragram).
But since Umarov's rallying cry to disrupt the Games last summer, two suicide bombings in December killed 34 people people in Volgograd, a transportation hub located about six hours' drive northeast of Sochi. An Islamic militant group claimed responsibility for those attacks in a video posted Sunday and threatened to attack Sochi next month, reports the Associated Press. Meanwhile, Russian police are looking for three potential suicide bombers — one of them believed to be in Sochi.
Russian president Vladimir Putin says 40,000 police and special forces officers will be deployed to guard the Games. The Pentagon announced on Thursday that it will station two warships in the Black Sea during the Games in case of attack. The USOC similarly says it is aware of threats and the need to guard against them.
“The safety and security of Team USA is our top priority," USOC CEO Scott Blackmun told Mashable through a publicist. "As is always the case, each Olympic Team at the Games relies on the local authorities to provide a secure environment for the Games. We are working with the U.S. Department of State, the local organizers and the relevant law enforcement agencies in an effort to ensure that our delegation and other Americans traveling to Sochi are safe. ”
Ato Boldon is a former Olympic sprinter from Trinidad and Tobago who won a total of four medals at the 1996 and 2000 Games. Today he's an Olympics analyst for NBC who will work the Sochi Games. When a bomb went off and killed two people at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Boldon was nearby in bed trying to fall asleep before the 100-meter-dash final the next day.
That bombing shook the Atlanta Games, though it did not come to define them the way a deadly attack by a Palestinian group defined the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. But Boldon says the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade Center changes the calculus when considering the security around any Olympics. While athletes at the 1996 Games were rattled by the bombing in Atlanta, Bolden told Mashable, "that was seen by most of us as criminal mischief as opposed to jihad or someone with a foreign agenda."
Boldon will travel solo to Sochi, but said that if he were competing this year, friends and family would receive no stay-away orders.
"I would certainly understand if any of them said, 'Based on what I'm seeing I'm not going to do it,' but they certainly wouldn't get any directive from me," Boldon told Mashable.
The 2012 Olympics in London were also preceded by anxiety. Some wondered about possible terror attacks, though there were no threats as specific as we've seen before this year's Games. Others opined the 2012 Games were doomed in the face of ugly weather forecasts. But almost everything in London went smoothly, and the Games were generally regarded as a massive success.
"When it's the Olympics, everything usually sort of rises to the occasion," Boldon said.
Meanwhile Meyers, the American bobsledder who will bring just her father and fiance to Sochi, must hope that holds true this year for the people charged with keeping fans and Olympians safe.
"At the end of the day, as an athlete I have to trust that the U.S. Olympic committee is doing everything possible to keep us safe," Meyers told Mashable. "As for my family, I pray every day for their safety."

Date unknown
Taken in 1926
Date unknown
Taken in 1986
Date unknown
Taken in 1976
Taken in 1925
Date unknown
Taken in 1938
Taken in 1939
Taken in 1985
Taken in 1935
Taken in 1933
Taken in 1938
Date unknown