The Winter Olympics always have had a concealed identity. The Games of snow and ice changed to an alternate even year in 1994 to gain a degree of spotlight from it summer counterpart.It seems half the nations don’t compete most of the times due to the nature of the sports.Sochi had a record 88 with 2873 attending.Nevertheless, its occupied an integral part of the sporting calendar and these year’s games have been rated as the event of the year.
With 92 associations competing and a record 2920 athletes,Pyeongchang, in the province of Gangwan-do,becomes the third Asian city to host the winter games.Ecuador,Eritrea,Singapore,Kosovo, Malysia and Nigeria are the newest entries to the fold.The hosts of the last olympics though Russia competed under OAR flag after their association was banned under state sponsored doping issues.
Its build up was never going to be easy being 40 miles from the border with North Korea and tensions on the rise.However as Sport has always proved in the past, it s the best uniter whereas Politics is the great divider.On February 9, The two Koreas marched together under one flag last as the hosts in a spectacle seen globally.They were competing as one team as well in the women’s ice hockey.
With Soohorang and Bandabi watching as mascots,a colourful ceremony took ot the olympic stadium outdoors in tundra like conditions.Following the parade of teams,the Olympic torch lit in Athens and brought from its global voyage to Korean shores before finally arriving to Pyeongchang where as expected the South Korean queen of figure skating from Vancouver 2010, Yuna Kim who set it alight following her mini routine .The Games had begun.The Koreans would have plenty of cheer in the first week.Even though its at 700 metre elevation, most of the venues had artificial ice and snow.
Not surprisingly their women’s ice hockey team struggled but the North Korean cheerleaders contingent set the stadium alight with plenty of K pop pumping and jumping.The home crowd cheers were responded to as Lim Ho-Jun first and then Choi Min Jeong took the 1500 metres short track double. They also captured the skeleton gold with Yun Sung Bin.
Norway and Germany have a good tradition in the games and Korea was no different. Norwegians’ strength was evident in week 1 in the cross country skiing scooping 5 golds.Germans had the luge sealed taking three with three more in the Biathlon in the first week.Sean White and Chloe Kim in the half pipe were convincing winners as Americans ran the snowboarding golds at a canter, picking four.The Dutch had skating glory with six golds.
Britain had a bronze in the Skeleton that Yun won through Dom Parsons, but its crown jewel event was the women’s version where the defending champion from Sochi Lizzy Yarnold took the nation’s first gold of Pyangchang.Laura Deas took bronze in the same event to double the overall medal tally.Lizzy’s 4 heat run was impressive and at times when Jacqueline Loelling of Germany and Janine Flack of Austria threatened to take the top medal away, she stormed back to line up clutch runs down the slide to take the title.
Though the perennial heavyweights are ruling, there’s plenty of cheer wherever you go.From the Jamaicans to the Swiss, the Argentines to Ghanaians.Yes, Korea has welcomed with open arms.The world is present in Pyangchang witnessing some great feats, thrills and spills, glory and defeat but all in the honour of healthy competition. Its only week 1, but some of fireworks are set ablaze and more surely are to come. Bring it on! Let the magic enchant you on the ice and snow!
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