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Beginning February 9, athletes from around the world will flock to Pyeongchang—a rugged, mountainous region in the Gangwon Province of South Korea—for the 2018 Winter Olympics.To prepare for the games, South Korea has built six new venues and refurbished six others in three different areas in the province: Pyeongchang, an area known for winter sports and home to the Olympic Stadium; Jeongseon, a former mining area home to the downhill skiing courses; and Gangneung, a resort town and bustling port city home to the ice skating, speed skating, and hockey arenas.Like any Olympics, Pyeongchang has made a few thorny headlines in the lead-up to the Games. Escalating military tension might be scaring away tourists, organizers have banned Russia from competing, and some worry that Pyeongchang’s frigid temperatures could pose problems for both athletes and spectators.The good news? Officials report that all 13 venues and the Olympic Village are ready to go, an impressive feat considering that organizers of the recent Sochi and Rio Games were scrambling to finish hotels and venues on time.In addition to the new venues, many Olympic athletes and visitors will arrive in Gangwon Province on a new $3.7 billion express train that just opened between Seoul and Pyeongchang. Instead of a taxing three-hour drive, the Korail train journey will take just under 1.5 hours.To get pumped for all the excitement to come, we’ve rounded up the details and best photos of the major Olympic venues. From a giant stadium to snow-covered ski runs, here’s where all the Olympic magic will happen.Built to hold 35,000 people, the pentagonal Pyeongchang Olympic Stadium will host the opening and closing ceremonies at the Olympics. Located about one mile northeast of Alpensia Ski Resort, the stadium is a temporary structure that will be dismantled after the Olympics are over.In recent months, the stadium has come under criticism because it was built without a roof or heat to save time and money. In November, seven people reportedly suffered hypothermia while attending a concert at the stadium. In order to alleviate the freezing temperatures and cold winds forecasted during the Olympics, officials will provide each spectator at the opening and closing ceremonies with a small blanket, a rain coat, and a heating pad.Athletes competing in Pyeongchang will stay in the Olympic Village located near the main stadium. The village will officially open on February 1, eight days before the opening ceremony.
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The compound includes eight apartment buildings—each 15 stories tall—with about 600 units total.A residential area is supplemented by an athletes’ plaza, and the village also includes important day-to-day services like banks, post offices, convenience stories, fitness centers, and multifaith churches. A similar Olympic Village in Gangneung has nine apartment buildings with a total of 922 units.A nexus of many different sports for the Olympics in the Pyeongchang Mountain Cluster, the Alpensia Sports Complex at Alpensia Ski Resort is home to the biathlon, cross-country skiing, and ski jumping centers. In total, South Korea has spent more than $1.5 billion on Alpensia and structures like the ski jumping center, which was completed in 2008 and features two different sloping ramps.Also located in the Pyeongchang Mountain Cluster, the 44-acre Olympic Sliding Center has several snaking chutes for bobsled, skeleton, and luge events. Constructed at a cost of $114.5 million, it was one of the last venues to complete, wrapping up in late 2017.All of the freestyle skiing and snowboard competitions will take place at the Phoenix Snow Park in the township of Bongpyeong-myeon. The facility sits at the foot of Mt. Taegi and includes mogul courses, big air jumps, and a half pipe.With seating for 6,500 and room for another 2,900 standing spectators, the Jeongseon Alpine Center is home base for both men’s and women’s downhill, super-G, and Alpine combined ski events. It sits in the Gariwang mountains—one of the most remote areas in South Korea—and already hosted World Cup skiing events in 2016 and 2017.Still in the Pyeongchang Mountain Cluster but located at Yongpyong Resort instead of Alpensia Ski Resort, the Yongpyong Alpine Center will host all of the slalom events. The top of the mountain stands 4,783 feet above sea level and has a vertical drop of 2,530 feet.One of two homes for Olympic hockey at this winter’s games, the Kwandong Hockey Center sits on a Catholic university campus and offers an intimate venue for 6,000 Olympic spectators. The Kwandong Hockey Center is part of five indoor arenas located in the coastal region of Gangneung.Instead of building a completely new venue for the curling events, Olympic officials decided to renovate an existing building in 2015 and 2016. Inside, four ice curling sheets painted with bullseyes will host the world’s best curlers.A new structure built specifically for the Olympics, the Gangneung Hockey Center was completed in 2017. The octagonal stadium fits 10,000 people and will host the men’s and women’s team hockey tournaments.The Gangneung Ice Arena is center stage for the exciting short-track speed skating races as well as the ever-popular figure skating competitions. At night, the building’s exterior lights up to reveal changing colors.This oval building seats 8,000 spectators and boasts a 400-meter double track. It’s the place to be if you’re watching any of the long-track speed skating events. It’s Winter Olympics time again, and soon the world’s best athletes will be schussing down the slopes, whirring through the air, zooming down the track and skating across the ice. This year, the Games take place in South Korea for the first time. Here’s what you need to know about the coming events.The host city of the Games is in the northeast part of South Korea, about 50 miles from the North Korean border.
South Korea’s winter sports resorts are not as well established as ski hubs in Europe, North America and Japan, but the Games could change that.As part of an effort to avoid confusion with Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, the city 10 years ago added an “e” and capitalized a “c,” rendering itself PyeongChang, rather than Pyongchang. To confuse matters, while some Western news media companies have accepted the new spelling, others are sticking with the original.The city is 14 hours ahead of Eastern Time. That means many big events will be quite late for Americans: The men’s hockey final on Feb. 25 will finish at 4 p.m., or about 2 a.m. in New York. Other events will be in prime time or a little after: Women’s figure skating on Feb. 23 ends about midnight New York time, 9 p.m. in Los Angeles. The men’s downhill skiing on Feb. 11 runs about 9 p.m. to midnight in New York.Soohorang, a white tiger. You will probably also see Bandabi, a black bear. He is the mascot of the Paralympics, which begin after the Winter Games.In the United States on NBC, plus affiliated channels NBCSN and others. Mike Tirico will be the primary host, taking over for longtime anchor Bob Costas. Streaming at nbcolympics.com will be free and include every event.Among the broadcasters worldwide are Seven Network, Australia; CBC, Canada; France Télévisions; ARD, Germany; and BBC, United Kingdom.When did the Winter Games get started?Figure skating and ice hockey were included in some early Summer Olympics, but the first full-fledged Winter Games took place in 1924 in Chamonix, France.When and where are future Games?The next two Olympics are also in Asia: Summer in 2020 in Tokyo and Winter in 2022 in Beijing, which will become the first city to host Summer and Winter Games. (The Summer Games were there in 2008.)After that, the Summer Games in 2024 and 2028 will be in Paris and Los Angeles. The 2026 Winter Games host will be chosen in 2019.What’s the difference between the various figure skating jumps?The loop, Salchow, toe loop, flip, Lutz and Axel look pretty much alike to the untrained eye. The differences are based on how the skater takes off and how she lands. A jump off the back outside edge, landing on the same edge, is a loop, for example. A jump off the back inside edge, landing on the opposite outside edge, is a Salchow. (Here’s a graphic that may help you understand the difference between some of these jumps.)What’s the difference between pairs figure skating and ice dancing?In both events, one man and one woman compete as a team. Ice dancing is more restrictive, barring many of the more athletic aspects of pairs skating, including jumping for more than one revolution and spinning for more than three revolutions.How does curling work and what do they mean by “the hammer?In curling, teams slide stones down the ice toward a target. Players with brooms sweep the ice to try to slow or speed the stone so it lands where they want it to go.After each team has bowled eight stones, the team with the stone closest to the center scores a point for every stone closer than the opponents’ closest (If you’re familiar with bocce or lawn bowling, it’s similar).It is to a team’s advantage to bowl the last stone. The team having this edge is said to have “the hammer.” Whichever team does not score in the previous round gets the hammer in the next round.How does the biathlon work?It’s a cross-country skiing race, with some rifle shooting thrown in. Skiers periodically stop to shoot at a target. If they miss, they get a penalty, generally having to ski a short penalty loop.Though they appear to be soaring at death-defying heights, ski jumpers actually are not that far off the ground, typically about 10 feet.Haven't followed any of the Winter Olympic sports in four years? Much has changed since 2014 in Sochi. Some old-timers are back, but four events—and several nations—are making their debuts, Russians will march under a new flag, and Koreans will fly a unified one.First to develop movable type (the year: 1234) and the cybercafé (1988), Korea is a fitting place to premier Olympic events—there are four:In the alpine team event, 16 mixed-gender teams, of six members each, race head-to-head down the slalom course in different pairs. For example, in the first heat, the team seeded first skis against the 16th seed—two women race, then two men, then two other women followed by two other men. Seed 8 faces seed 9 in the second heat, and so on. The losing team of each round is knocked out. At the worlds in 2017, the favored Austrians lost in the quarterfinals and France won. With world champ Marcel Hirscher, Austria can’t lose again, right?Each team comprises two players—one female and one male—in big air snowboarding, which is like a ski jump for snowboarders. The ramp in Alpensia is more than 160 feet high, the tallest in the world, and will propel boarders 20 to 30 feet into the air. Athletes get three runs in the final, and their scores are based on difficulty, execution, amplitude and landing. Canadians Max Parrot, 23, and Mark McMorris, 24, who was nearly killed in a backcountry snowboarding crash in British Columbia last March, are favorites in the men’s competition. World No. 1 Anna Gasser, 26, of Austria is the first woman to get a perfect score of 100, which she received last March at the world championships in Sierra Nevada, Spain.In curling mixed doubles: A two-person team, such as Wangang Rui and Ba De Xin of China, throws five stones per end, and a game is eight ends. Unlike in other matches, one rock is placed as the center guard and another at the back of the button at the beginning of each end. The team that did not score in the previous end can choose which position to play. Mixed doubles also includes a power play—in which a team can place its rock in a more advantageous spot, straddling the edge of the circle, with the back of the stone touching the tee line. Now, the casual viewer may not understand this, but the Swiss, Canadians and Swedes do—they are favored.
Mass-start speedskating was introduced on the World Cup circuit in 2011. The race is 16 laps around the 400-meter oval, with as many as 24 skaters starting simultaneously. It’s like short-track skating on a long track, but it also figures to be different from other long-track events in PyeongChang—a Dutch skater probably won’t finish first. Several South Koreans are strong, Joey Mantia of the U.S. could get a medal and Italy’s Francesca Lollobrigida (great niece of Gina) is the favorite among the women.Six countries are participating in the Winter Games for the first time: Ecuador, Eritrea, Kosovo, Malaysia, Nigeria and Singapore. Cross-country skier Klaus Jungbluth, 38, is a sports science Ph.D. student at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Sippy Downs, Australia, but was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador. Eritrea has qualified one athlete, Canada-born skier Shannon-Ogbani Abeda, 21, whose parents fled the War of Independence in the 1980s. Alpine skier Albin Tahiri, 28, who was born and raised in Slovenia, is representing Kosovo, the home country of both of his parents. Malaysia has two athletes: figure skater Julian Yee, 20, who finished 22nd at the 2017 world championships and Alpine skier Jeffrey Webb, 19, who trains in Wenatchee, Wash. Nigeria is sending a female skeleton racer—Simidele Adeagbo, 36, a four time All-America in the triple jump at Kentucky—and a women’s bobsled team that’s the first from Africa to compete at the Winter Games. Singapore is represented by short-track speedskater Cheyenne Goh, 18, who moved to Edmonton when she was four but is training in her native country.Also competing for the first time is a delegation called the Olympic Athletes from Russia (OAR). These athletes will not march behind the Russian flag or hear the Russian anthem on the podium, and they will wear uniforms that have RUSSIA written on them but preceded by the words OLYMPIC ATHLETES FROM. The IOC banned the country for establishing a state-sponsored doping program; OAR athletes have to demonstrate that they are clean to be eligible for PyeongChang. So, despite the “ban,” dozens of athletes born, raised and training in Russia will be participating in PyeongChang.New Faces
For the first time since 1994, NHL players will not be participating in the Games—good news for those who prefer regular-season NHL action to a monthlong tournament of the world’s best players giving their all for their countries. The NHL and the IOC could not agree on terms (unlike North and South Korea). This is not to say NHL vets won’t appear in PyeongChang. All but two members of Team Canada have NHL experience, and the U.S. roster includes 15 former NHLers. Most participants play in European leagues, including Russia’s KHL, and the Olympic Athletes from Russia team, led by former NHL stars Pavel Datsyuk and Ilya Kovalchuk, is a favorite. But Sweden, with likely future No. 1 pick defenseman Rasmus Dahlin, 17, could be bound for the podium too.Ski jumper Noriaki Kasai of Japan, who made his Olympic debut in Albertville, will be competing at his eighth Winter Games—a record. The 45-year-old Kasai has won three medals: a team silver in 1994 and an individual silver and team bronze in 2014. (That gap between medals is the longest in Winter Olympic history.) Kasai made his World Cup debut in 1988 when he was 16. And German speedskater Claudia Pechstein, 45, is returning for her seventh Games. Her nine career medals are the most of any speedskater.There are a number of siblings competing in PyeongChang. The Dufour-Lapointe sisters ?from Montreal form a significant percentage of Team Canada again. In Sochi, Justine, 23, and Chloé, 26, claimed gold and silver, respectively, in moguls, while Maxime, 28, placed 12th. The Shib Sibs—Maia, 23, and Alex, 26, Shibutani of the U.S.—finished ninth in 2014 in ice dancing but are favored to win a medal in 2018. North and South Korea have formed a combined women’s hockey team, but one of the players is Marissa Brandt, 24, who was born in South Korea and adopted by the Brandt family of Vadnais Heights, Minn., when she was four months old. Her sister, Hannah, 23, is a forward on the U.S. hockey team. Johannes Thingnes Bø, 24, from the village of Markane, Norway, is favored to win several medals in biathlon, and his older brother Tarjei, 29, might take home one or two as well. Erik Bjornsen, 26, and his sister, Sadie, 28, from Winthrop, Wash., are representing the U.S. in cross-country skiing. Erik is an undergrad at Alaska Pacific University in Anchorage, and Sadie is working on an MBA at the school, having completed an undergraduate degree in accounting and nonprofit business management. The Hamilton siblings, Matt, 28, and Becca, 27, from McFarland, Wis., are on the U.S. men’s and women’s curling teams, and they’ll form the U.S. entry in the new event of mixed doubles. Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson and Monique Lamoureux-Morando, 28-year-old twins from Grand Forks, N.D., have earned six world titles and two Olympic silver medals with the U.S. hockey team. They’ve won everything there is to win—except Olympic gold.Not only will North Korea send 22 athletes, including three Alpine skiers, three cross-country skiers, two short-track speed-skaters and a figure skating pair to PyeongChang, but athletes from North and South will also march together in the Opening Ceremony behind the flag of a unified country and under the name “Korea.” Twelve athletes from the North will also be added to the women’s hockey team from the South. The delegation from North Korea will include an orchestra, cheerleaders and journalists as well. The last time North Korea (aka the People’s Republic of Korea—PRK on scoreboards) participated in the Winter Games? It sent a figure skater and a speedskater to Vancouver.The 2018 Winter Olympics are just a few weeks away, and if you weren't already excited for the sporting event, this charming, quirky GIF of three top-ranking Finnish ski jumpers will do the trick. The viral GIF seems to have been created by Gfycat user tomyhy, but we first spotted it on a Reddit thread started by Redditor Buki1.It's unclear when the event this GIF is from took place, but it seems to have surfaced at just the right moment. It is nearly impossible to look away from Finnish ski jumpers Jarkko Maeattae, Eetu Nousiainen, and Janne Ahonen as they appear to wipe their expressions away with their hands.Although it seems that Finland's official 2018 Winter Olympic ski jumping team has yet to be announced, it's likely that you'll be able to catch some of the athletes shown in the GIF above hit the slopes during the competition along with other Finnish national team members Antti Aalto and Ville Larinto.You'll be able to catch ski jumping, an extreme sport in which athletes ski down a ramp and attempt to cover as much distance as possible while in the air, from February 10 to 19 during the Winter Olympics, which will be held in Peyongchang, South Korea.And if this GIF is any indication, more hilarious antics will probably ensue. Competitors typically jump further than the length of a football pitch at speeds of 60mph. (Coincidentally the landing area at the Ski Jumping Centre is used as a football pitch in summer months.)Distance is the biggest factor in success - but points are also awarded for style, partly to discourage dangerous techniques. Each competitor has two jumps, which are combined in the final standings.All male competitors take part in the qualification round. Previously, the top 10 in the world rankings had received byes. The women's competition, which made its Olympic debut in Sochi, remains unchanged - there is no qualifying round for them.Pole Kamil Stoch won two gold medals in Sochi and hogged the glory at the recent Four Hills tournament, winning all four stages. Germans Richard Freitag and Andreas Wellinger are also threats. All eyes will be on Japan's Sara Takanashi but Norway's Maren Lundby and Katharina Althaus of Germany are the form women.Japan's Noriaki Kasai, 45, will set a new Winter Olympic record by competing at his eighth Games. He has three medals (two silvers and a bronze) and claims he could even aim for the 2026 Games - when he would be 53 - if they are awarded to the Japanese city of Sapporo.It’s a difficult moment to look at the Korean Peninsula and think about sports, with fears of nuclear catastrophe looming larger than they have since the Cold War.When the XXIII Olympic Winter Games begin Friday in Pyeongchang, South Korea, the politics of a nuclear North Korea will be an inevitable topic of discussion as will the absence of an official Russian delegation because of ongoing allegations of state-sponsored doping.But politics and drugs are part of every Olympics, and the best athletes in the world still find a way to cut through the murk. So here are five storylines to watch for the Winter Games:The most recent news on this front has been upbeat, with North and South Korea announcing in January that they would form a single delegation and march into the Feb. 9 opening ceremony under a blue-and-white unification flag.It was not clear how many athletes North Korea would send, but the agreement carried great symbolic weight after a year of heightened tensions between the neighboring Koreas.It remains to be seen what United States officials might say about North Korea as the world turns its gaze toward Pyeongchang. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un have spent much of the past year lobbing insults at each other, even as the United States wrestles with the serious question of how to handle a nuclear North Korea.Some international affairs experts have argued that Kim’s recent Olympic diplomacy is a ploy to improve his standing on the world stage.
Regardless, the political backdrop will be an urgent topic as the Korean and U.S. delegations roll into Pyeongchang Olympic Stadium.Slalom queen Mikaela Shiffrin is the best bet to emerge as the dominant American performer in Pyeongchang. Shiffrin won a gold medal in 2014, but since then, the 22-year-old Colorado native has established herself as one of the most dominant skiers in history, with world championship gold medals in 2015 and 2017 and a mind-boggling string of World Cup victories.Shiffrin is the daughter of two ski racers who sought to mold her into a champion from an early age. In South Korea, she’ll be an overwhelming favorite in the slalom and a top contender in the giant slalom and combined events. She could become just the second American (after Andrea Mead Lawrence) to win two gold medals in Alpine skiing at one Olympics or the second American (after Bode Miller) to win three overall medals in Alpine skiing at one Olympics.Meanwhile, don’t forget downhill master Lindsey Vonn, whose female record for World Cup victories Shiffrin might one day chase. At age 33, Vonn has battled physical woes for years, including the knee injury that kept her out of the 2014 Olympics. But if she’s healthy in South Korea, she can’t be counted out in the downhill or the super-G.The United States is still searching for its next figure skating superstar.When you think of past American stars from the Winter Games, figure skaters dominate the list.But U.S. skaters didn’t win a medal in either the men’s or women’s individual competitions in 2014, and no U.S. woman has won an individual medal since Sasha Cohen took silver in 2006.On the men’s side, 18-year-old Nathan Chen has a chance to reset the narrative with his jaw-dropping array of quadruple jumps. He hit seven of them cleanly to win his second consecutive national title last month. Chen is a gold-medal contender but could also skate well and finish off the medal stand because of fierce competition from stars such as Shoma Uno and Yuzuru Hanyu, both of Japan.On the women’s side, the United States would need a major upset to claim even a bronze medal.Gracie Gold, once considered the country’s best medal bet, stepped away from the sport last fall to focus on treatment for depression and an eating disorder.Bradie Tennell won a national championship and secured her Olympic spot in January, but the 20-year-old has a thin international resume. Teammate Karen Chen finished fourth at world championships last year but just third at nationals last month. Veteran Mirai Nagasu has more experience than either against elite competition but has never broken through at an Olympics or world championships. She at least has the triple axel, a jump no other contender is expected to attempt, as a potential equalizer.The bottom line is there’s no sign the next Michelle Kwan or Tara Lipinski is walking through that door.Among the X athletes, look for the old man and the female prodigy.At age 31, snowboarder Shaun White remains one of the biggest names in the U.S. delegation, but he had to scrap just to get into his fourth Olympics.White won gold in the halfpipe in both 2006 and 2010 before falling to fourth in 2014. He was in danger of failing to qualify this year until he scored a perfect 100 on his last run at the Snowmass Grand Prix in January. That clutch performance raised the possibility White might have one more great run in him with a gold medal on the line.For the next big thing, look to the women’s side, where 17-year-old snowboarder Chloe Kim is expected to seize a medal and figure prominently in NBC’s coverage.Kim was too young to compete in the 2014 Olympics, where she would have been a medal contender. But between her deep bag of tricks, her outgoing personality and her background as a first-generation Korean-American, she’s the perfect package for these games.The ongoing Russian doping scandal will be unavoidable.Despite the December news that the International Olympic Committee would ban Russia — always a titan in the Winter Games — from Pyeongchang, some Russian athletes will compete in neutral gray uniforms, without a national affiliation.These athletes (hundreds applied for exemptions) had to win individual approval from an IOC panel by demonstrating a history of competing clean. Though the IOC punishment, for “unprecedented systematic manipulation” of doping regulations, was theoretically a bombshell, it left many anti-doping officials angry with what they describe as a half-measure.On the other side, Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, have lashed out against the ban and disputed the facts behind the IOC investigation.Each time a Russian athlete competes, doping will be the underlying context, as was the case at the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro.The Russian scandal, comparable only to the East German doping regimen of the 1970s and 1980s, has been a leading Olympic story for years now, and there’s no end in sight.
The 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea will officially kick off on Feb. 9 with its highly-anticipated opening ceremony.The Olympics opening ceremony, which will have a peace theme, is expected to feature K-pop performances (fans may be hoping for BTS), heated patriotic uniforms and some very cold temperatures.Here’s what we know about the Olympics opening ceremony festivities so far, including when and where it will take place:What time does the 2018 Olympics opening ceremony start?The Olympics opening ceremony will take place in PyeongChang on Friday, Feb. 9, beginning at 8 p.m. local time (6 a.m. EST). The opening ceremony is expected to last about two hours.
The official Winter Olympic Games schedule begins the day before the opening ceremony, with curling and ski jumping events starting on Feb. 8.How can I watch the Olympics opening ceremony?Where will the opening ceremony be held?The Olympics opening ceremony will take place in the new PyeongChang Olympic Stadium, which seats 35,000 people. The venue will be used just four times — for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2018 Olympics and Paralympics — before being torn down. Construction of the stadium was part of the roughly $13 billion that South Korea is spending on the Olympics, the Associated Press reported.But amid severe winter weather warnings, organizers fear that the Olympic stadium, which has no roof, might make the opening ceremony too cold for spectators to endure. Conditions inside the venue at the start of the Olympics are expected to feel like 7 degrees Fahrenheit due to wind chill, Reuters reported, citing an Olympic organizing committee internal document. The forecast has prompted organizers to work on measures to prevent cases of hypothermia.This is a very serious issue,” South Korean lawmaker Shim Ki-joon told Reuters in December. “This is creating a headache to not only the organizers but the presidential office, which sent officials to the venue to figure out ways to fight the cold.”What will happen at the Olympics opening ceremony?
As in every Olympics opening ceremony since 1908, athletes will march into the stadium under their country’s flag during the Parade of Nations. Olympic athletes from North and South Korea will march together under a single flag — a historic diplomatic decision that has caused some controversy.Even before North and South Korea agreed to unite, organizers had planned for the Olympics opening ceremony to have a theme of peace. “We have worked on all of our scenarios under the theme of peace,” Song Seung-whan, the executive creative director for the opening ceremony, said at a press conference in January, according to Reuters. “Although North Korea’s participation was decided belatedly, we think this will serve as a good opportunity for us to convey our message more clearly.The Olympics opening ceremony is expected to connect aspects of Korean history with current Korean culture, likely featuring K-pop performances, Reuters reported.Pita Taufatofua — the oiled-up Tongan flag-bearer who became a social media sensation during the opening ceremony of the 2016 Rio Olympics — is set to compete in PyeongChang as a cross-country skier. It’s likely he will carry his country’s flag once again because he is the only athlete from Tonga who qualified for the Winter Olympics this year. But he will presumably be more fully clothed, as freezing temperatures in PyeongChang are expected to cause the coldest Olympic games in decades.Team USA is preparing to weather those bitter temperatures by wearing heated parkas as the athletes parade into the Olympic stadium. The uniforms, which feature American flags made of heat-conductive ink, were designed by Polo Ralph Lauren, the official outfitter for the 2018 U.S. Olympic and Paralympic teams.Who will attend the opening ceremony?The U.S. delegation to the Olympics will be led by Vice President Mike Pence, who is slated to attend the opening ceremony and other Olympic events with his wife, Karen Pence, California Rep. Ed Royce and 2002 Olympic figure skating gold medalist Sarah Hughes.Also joining the U.S. delegation will be Gen. Vincent Brooks, who commands the United Nations Command and U.S. Forces Korea; his predecessor, Gen. James Thurman; and Marc Knapper, a diplomat currently leading the U.S. embassy in Seoul.The image of ski jumping burned into the brains of generations of Americans is actually the image of a man not ski jumping. In 1970, during a competition in Germany, an ill-prepared Slovenian named Vinko Bogataj shot down the hill in a crouch, but tipped backward a few yards from the end. From there, the blundering escalated quickly. Bogataj slid briefly on his rear, then began whipping around ferociously, his long skis twirling like a propeller. As he spun off the hill into the crowd, his goggles shot off, like a shard of food ejected from a malfunctioning blender, and his body ripped down a promotional banner hanging in his way. Finally, after much bouncing, he came to a stop. The old rule held: What goes up must come down, even though he never really went up.Bogataj’s ski-jumping career ended. But the footage of his crash was incorporated into the opening sequence of ABC’s “Wide World of Sports” — illustrating what the stentorian voice-over called “the agony of defeat.” Rebroadcast every weekend for almost three decades, the disaster became iconic — viral, in a regularly scheduled, pre-internet way. Until the network tracked him down 11 years later, Bogataj had no idea he’d become the face of failure in America — or, for that matter, the de facto face of ski jumping, an otherwise exceedingly low-profile sport. Eventually, another figure would lodge in the American imagination, a ski-jumping catastrophist of a different type: Eddie the Eagle, a.k.a. Michael Edwards, the hapless English plasterer who had been training for exactly 20 months when he represented the United Kingdom at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary. Eddie arrived with no coach and competed with borrowed equipment and so much staggering fear, he explained to the press, that just before letting go of the bar at the top of the in-run, he could feel his “bum shriveled up like a prune.” He finished last, of course, but charmed planet Earth with his buffoonish gutsiness. He still does public appearances. A biopic came out in 2016.
In many European countries, ski jumping is as prominent as basketball is here. But for a long time in the United States, the only ski jumpers familiar to many people were a court jester from England and that flopping, man-shaped ceiling fan who spun downhill on TV every Saturday afternoon. These are the reference points outsiders tend to throw back at anyone who gushes that after years of admirable persistence, her son or daughter is going to the Olympics in ski jumping. Never mind that lately a surge of talent, optimism and pride has been building within the sport. Such is the half-life of sensational failures.America has won a medal in ski jumping at the Olympics exactly once, during the first modern Games, in 1924, when an eccentric part-time bricklayer named Anders Haugen earned a bronze. And even then, because of a scoring error, Haugen’s medal was accidentally given to a Norwegian jumper. The mistake was caught 50 years later; Haugen received his medal at age 86.In those early days, the sport looked nothing as it does now. Jumpers soared into the air in a prouder, more upright position, arms stretched forward, like superheroes. In retrospect, the posture may have reflected a philosophical misunderstanding: Ski jumpers still saw themselves as protagonists, conquering the wind instead of riding it.It’s really unnatural and uncomfortable — the whole sport, generally,” says Alan Alborn, a former Olympian and the current U.S. women’s ski-jumping head coach. For young jumpers especially, training on smaller hills, the experience is almost violent. An athlete’s body is overloaded with sensation: a barrage of air pressure; the whistling static and rush of the wind. But slowly, his or her mechanics improve. The takeoffs get cleaner: The legs push down harder, lifting the jumper off the end of the in-run more explosively and with better timing. Then the skis find just the right angle at which to splay. The hill at the Olympics is steep enough and long enough to enable jumps of 100 meters. But by the time a kid moves up to jumping from the so-called 60-meter hill, usually when she’s around 13, she is picking up sufficient speed on the runway to feel it happen in the air — that thing she has been hearing about for years.What is it, exactly? The short answer is: flight. The jumper has harnessed the air beneath her skis and is genuinely, momentarily flying. But the way the phenomenon is discussed, it’s almost as though the athlete has entered some unconveyable altered state. A former Olympic coach, Scott Smith, told me flatly: “It’s hard to explain to you, because you don’t do it.” Alborn compared the experience to that trope in action films where, suddenly, all the frenetic, bullet-whirring madness jerks into ultraslow motion. The onrush of sensation is gone. From there, it all gets very simple. Alborn says, “You want to stay away from the earth as long as possible.”That is, once in the air, the art of ski jumping lies in minimizing the fact that you exist — that you are solid mass, subject to gravity. Accordingly, the aerodynamics of the jumpsuit jumpers wear have gradually been tweaked. The get-ups, which resemble a kind of human beer cozy, now sag in the crotch, to subtly catch more of an updraft, and are permeable, to minimize unhelpful resistance. There are, however, scrupulous rules about the degree of sagging and permeability; the threat of “suit doping” is real.Otherwise, it’s a matter of shimmying your shoulder or hip here or there, optimizing your body geometry in real time, to compensate for microgusts of wind. Mostly, you just lie forward, at an impossible angle, then more forward still, flattening yourself into a sleek, nearly two-dimensional shape. Physicists have worked up mathematical equations to describe all this, but here’s the gist: After you barrel down a tremendous hill and propel yourself off the bottom with all the brute force your legs and psyche can muster, the goal is to shrug off these acts of preternatural courage and audacity and suddenly become nothingness. You may think you’re still the pilot, but you’re not. You’re the wing.
Then, of course: whack. After flying the length of a football field at 55 miles an hour, even the most graceful landing carries a significant shock. Historically, the harshness of that impact, and the threat of accidents, have led men to prohibit women from participating in the sport. A journalist covering a competition in 1910 noted that the Austrian noblewoman Paula Lamberg — an early renegade, known as the Floating Baroness — executed some excellent jumps, “even for men.” Though, he added, “one prefers to see women with nicely mellifluous movements which show elegance and grace, like in ice skating or lawn tennis.” And it definitely wouldn’t be “enjoyable or aesthetic” to watch a woman crash, he went on, particularly the unsavory sight of her “mussed-up hair.”Other turn-of-the-century objections were pseudoscientific, often focused on the uterus. Amazingly, these lasted through the turn of our century. By 2005, men had been ski jumping in the Olympics for 81 years, but the International Olympic Committee still refused to sanction a women’s event. That year, the president of the International Ski Federation explained to NPR that the sport “seems not to be appropriate for ladies from a medical point of view” — to which the American ski jumper Lindsey Van artfully responded, “I kind of want to vomit.” Van found herself burdened with explaining that for her, unlike for all those ski-jumping men, “my baby-making organs are on the inside.Ultimately women’s ski jumping was admitted to the 2014 Games in Sochi, not long after a lawsuit filed against the organizers of the preceding Games, in Vancouver, by 15 of the most accomplished female jumpers in the world, including Van. (At the time, Van held the record for jumpers of any gender on the Vancouver Olympic hill.) The tenacious battle for inclusion shone a brighter light on the sport. There was a daily swirl of reporters around the women as they trained. For decades, the most familiar stories in ski jumping were about the spectacular or laughable failures of men who maybe shouldn’t have been competing in the first place. For the women, the entire story was about the fight to take off.By now, the best American jumper and emerging face of the sport is widely acknowledged to be Sarah Hendrickson, a 23-year-old from Park City, Utah. After rebounding from a catastrophic knee injury four years ago, Hendrickson now has a not-inconceivable shot at winning a medal in Pyeongchang and has sponsorships from Red Bull and Nike. Both are unusual circumstances for an American ski jumper. Nearly a million people watched her and the other Americans compete in this year’s Olympic ski-jumping trials on NBC in December. It was the second-most-watched event of all the Olympic trials the network broadcast. And it was a Sunday to boot; there was football happening.Three of those viewers were sitting on my couch. The first time Hendrickson jumped — a floating, otherworldly wisp, zipped in a neon-green, microfiber flight suit — she hung in the center of the screen long enough for my 4-year-old daughter to ask if she was real.Olympic ski jumpers Kevin Bickner, Will Rhoads and Michael Glasder get one final preparation this weekend prior to the Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018. Three days of jumping are set for the world cup stop in Willingen, Germany. HS145 jumping qualifications are Friday, followed by finals Saturday and Sunday, which is less than one week before the start of the Olympic competition. Olympic qualifying begins Feb. 8.Rhoads and Bickner, who will both make their Olympic debuts in PyeongChang, are tied with Roman Koudelka of the Czech Republic for 44th place in the world cup standings. Bickner, also a first-time Olympian, is coming off a 24th-place finish in January in Austria.Glasder secured his Olympic berth by winning the U.S. Olympic Team Trials in December.
On a sloping bank of the Fox River, an imposing structure rises from the flat Midwestern plain, setting the town of Fox River Grove apart from its neighbors.Scott Smith is a ski jumping coach and president of the Norge Ski Club, founded in 1905 by some Norwegian immigrants who must have wanted to spice up Chicago winters. They built a ski jump, and the jumpers came.The club's annual competition was held this past weekend, and thousands of fans showed up. Fritz Gohl was one of them. This is one of the biggest crowds i've seen in maybe the last 20 years," he said.There's more interest than usual in the jumpers now, because the little Norge Ski Club is for the first time sending not one but three homegrown contestants to the upcoming Winter Olympics.Kevin Bickner, Casey Larson and Mike Glasder are making Smith's dream come true, and others could follow in their footsteps in the near future. Hunter Gibson has been jumping since he was 5. Now, he's 16 years old and pointing toward a future Olympics.Not many people can say they can fly through the air on a pair of skis going 60 miles per hour, you know," Gibson said. "It does help if you have a little daredevil-ish in you.Team USA is looking to end a long medal drought in ski jumping, and its new team of young jumpers is ready to take off in PyeongChang for the Olympic Winter Games in a few weeks.Nita Englund and Abby Ringquist have been named to the U.S. women’s team, and up-and-comers Kevin Bickner, Will Rhoads and Casey Larson have been named for the U.S. men as discretionary picks and based on world cup ranking.They join 2014 Olympian Sarah Hendrickson — the first woman to ever jump in an Olympic ski competition — and Michael Glasder, both of whom won the U.S. Olympic Team Trials in December. Team USA is on a quest to win its first Olympic medal in ski jumping since Anders Haugen won bronze in 1924. Jeff Hastings came close with a fourth in the large hill event in Sarajevo in 1984. Jessica Jerome was 10th to lead the U.S. women in their Olympic debut in Sochi.The 25-year-old Englund has posted the best U.S. results of anyone since the Olympic Winter Games Sochi 2014, which includes a second-place finish in 2015. She is a world cup veteran and competed in her first world championships in 2017. The Florence, Wisconsin native placed seventh and eighth in the HS109 meter normal hill at the Olympic test event last year.Ringquist, 28, was right behind Englund at the Olympic test event. A native of Park City, Utah, the world cup veteran ranks 40th in world cup standings. Ringquist had a breakout world cup season in 2013 in which she posted a career high in points and finished 21st in the world.In 2017, Bickner, 21, smashed the U.S. distance record when he went for 244.5 meters on the ski flying hill in Vikersund, Norway. The Wauconda, Illinois native has been a U.S. ski jumping prodigy since he was 9 years old, earning two junior national titles while working his way onto five junior national teams.Rhoads, 22, finished 21st at a world cup in December to tie the best result by a U.S. man since 2003. He won his third large hill national championship in a row last July, and is a junior national champion who has competed in four junior world championships. He also competed at the inaugural Winter Youth Olympic Games in 2012. Rhoads made his world cup debut in 2015. He and Bickner are tied for 42nd in the world cup standings this season.Larson, just 19, scored a top-10 finish at the 2017 junior world championships last February in Park City, Utah. The Barrington, Illinois native finished sixth at the 2016 Winter Youth Olympic Games.The women will have a single event on the HS109 meter normal hill. Men will have two individual competitions — one each on the HS140 meter large hill plus the HS109 normal hill — along with a team event.Glasder was the first one named to the Olympic team after winning the U.S. team trials.That was awesome because the Norge Ski Club has never had any Olympians before,” he said. “It just goes to show what three of us being named to the Olympic team what’s possible coming out of a small suburb of Chicago.Their coach, Scott Smith, says having three men from the same club named to the Olympic team is unprecedented, adding it’s a testament to the athletes’ hard work and the structure of Norge’s program.Smith is in the American Ski Jumping Hall of Fame himself.The 2018 Winter Games opening ceremony is Feb. 9 in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Men’s ski jumping competition begins Feb. 8.The Norge Ski Club in Fox River Grove is known for a playful annual ski jump tournament in which spectators huddle by fires, dress like Vikings, wear funny hats and honk on vuvuzelas while kids slide down hills on empty cardboard beer boxes as competitors soar above.This year, though, it is expected to be known for the hard work and dedication that made it the home club of three members of the U.S. Olympic ski jumping team, a feat that has been described as “unprecedented” by the team’s coach.Nothing like this has happened before. It’s phenomenal,” said Charlie Sedivec, who has served as master of ceremonies at the club’s winter tournament for 48 years.The club dates to 1905 and is older than the northwest suburb it calls home. This is the first time anyone from Norge’s team has qualified for the Olympics.Norge coach Scott Smith announced Tuesday morning that Kevin Bickner, 21, of Wauconda, and Casey Larson, 19, of Barrington, will be named to the ski jump squad. Mike Glasder, 28, of Cary, qualified for the team by winning the Olympic trial in Park City, Utah, in late December.As of Tuesday, a Team USA spokesman declined to confirm that Bickner and Larson had made the team, but did confirm that two more jumpers who had trained at Norge made the cut. An official announcement is expected in coming days.The official announcement of the entire ski jump team is expected to be made by Thursday, according to Tom Bickner, Kevin’s father.This goes to show what hard work can do, and that we have a structured program,” Smith said.
Add in devoted parents, young athletes and club leaders who latched on to a dream, helping the Norge community — like the Cubs before them — end a century of futility in making the team.We’re a little club, the flatlanders of Chicago,” said Gene Brown, corresponding secretary for the club.Brown, of Fox River Grove, credited the team’s growing success to coaches, particularly Smith, a member of the American Ski Jumping Hall of Fame. He noted that the club also opened its own training center 17 years ago.The club’s biggest jump is a 70-meter hill, which stands 160 feet. More than a dozen years ago, Norge bought that tower from the town of Ely, Minn., to replace its aging 60-meter jump.We have a lot of dedicated parents who have helped pay for training and (have) done fundraising for the club and its operation,” Brown said.For the Glasders, Bickners and Larsons, the club became a second home when their kids were growing up.Maureen Bickner said her son, Kevin, who has been downhill skiing since he was 4 and took to ski jumping when he was 10, learned on the artificial surface at the Norge Ski Club and its training center. Kevin Bickner fell the first three times, landed on his next try and was hooked from that moment, Maureen Bickner said.The following winter we were out downhill skiing, and Kevin said to me he always had thought he’d be in the Olympics for downhill, but now he would be there for the ski jump. He was so serious. So sure of himself,” Maureen Bickner said. “That seems so long ago. It doesn’t seem real, and now that moment is here.Kathy Glasder, of Cary, said her son, Mike, almost made the team in 2010 and 2014.His dream is now reality,” she said. “Mike had the courage, determination and strength, and never gave up.Guy Larson said ski jumping has been a favorite activity for Casey, who started at 6 years old, with his sister, Cara, taking to the sport shortly thereafter.They always enjoyed all types of skiing and snowboarding,” Guy Larson said.Guy Larson said his son played football, baseball and lacrosse, but by high school he was on a the U.S. developmental ski jump team.A coach had told Casey if he stuck with ski jumping he might make the Olympics, so that’s where he put his focus,” Guy Larson said.Casey graduated from high school a year early to allow him to compete on the international level, Guy Larson said.This is really, really exciting. I thought for a time it was a long shot, but Casey has a tremendous work ethic. All ski jumpers at that level do. It’s one of the hardest sports, both physically and mentally,” Guy Larson said.Kathy Glasder said the family’s home is just across the Fox River from Norge Ski Club, and Mike took up the sport when he was 5 years old.It was during Christmas break. They found a pair of skis there for him to use that were so old they had ‘flower power’ stickers on them,” Kathy Glasder said.Mike’s uncle, John Glasder, had been a ski jumper and was teaching him some basics. When lunchtime came around, Mike didn’t want to eat.He said he wanted to do it until he got it right,” Kathy Glasder said. “He loved it.A year later, Mike was taking part in his first competition, and from those days always wanted to be the first one on the hill, Kathy Glasder said. The family juggled schedules while the boys were growing up, with Kathy, a dental hygienist, frequently heading to weekend meets in Minnesota and Wisconsin.The club became a second family for us, and coach Scott Smith became a second dad for Mike,” Kathy Glasder said.By the time Mike was 14, he stopped playing soccer and baseball. He as competing on the international level in ski jumping. That meant missing a good amount of school, but he was keeping up with his studies while overseas, Kathy Glasder said.When he was in junior high school, Mike took to writing to friends, family and organizations, including the Chicago Metropolitan Ski Council, seeking financial assistance, Kathy Glasder said. During the offseason he worked construction jobs. Kathy Glasder said that included work with other jumpers in Park City, site of the Olympic training center.Knock wood, but Mike’s only injury happened several years ago with some sidework. He was moving a pile of downed trees with an ATV and broke his collarbone. He’s never been hurt ski jumping,” Kathy Glasder said.While ski jumping appears perilous, Kathy Glasder said there are risks with competing in any sport. As a parent, injuries might be in the back of her mind, she said, “But you try not to think about it. Mike knows what he needs to do. He’s trained properly and he’s well-coached.”
Getting to this moment meant a move for the Bickner family from Wauconda to Park City after Kevin made the developmental squad at 16.
Maureen said she took a job teaching math at the winter sports school there for athletes, while her husband, Tom, is in a tech sales job that allows him to work anywhere there is an international airport.Parents of the skiers are planning their trips to South Korea, where the Olympic Games in Pyeongchang are scheduled to start Feb. 9..The Bickners and the Larsons said they have seen their sons previously compete on the international level. For the Glasders, though, this will be the first time they will be traveling to see their son compete outside the United States.I’m verklempt about that,” Maureen Glasder said. “We don’t even know yet if we will get to see Mike when we’re there, so we’re planning to get to the venue early in case we do.For Fox River Grove Village President Bob Nunamaker, the Olympic news only adds to the excitement of one of the biggest weekends of the year for his community. He again will be volunteering at the Norge Winter Tournament over the weekend, which is expected to draw a large crowd.There’s a tremendous amount of civic pride and pride in the guys and the team,” Nunamaker said. “The three making the Olympics means great recognition for the management of the Norge Ski Club.Sedivec said that the biggest crowd at the annual tournament he could recall was the Sunday in 1989 when British ski jumper Eddie “the Eagle” Edwards made a guest appearance.The Sunday of the club’s tournament always is the busiest day of the year for the nearby Tin Man’s Cup Sports Pub, and bartender Madelyn Brown said they expect it to be even bigger this year.I think it will be busier than usual. There’s been a lot of talk already,” Brown said.Brian Bushy surprised his son and daughter Sunday with their very first trip to Norge Ski Club.Bushy, of Carpentersville, said he had attended the Fox River Grove ski club's annual International Winter Tournament many times but with the excitement over three club members heading to the South Korean Olympics this year, it was time to bring the kids.That excitement led to some of the biggest crowds ever seen at the weekend event, club President Gene Brown said.From his vantage point in the judge's boot, Brown estimated between 7,000 to 8,000 people were in attendance Sunday.Saturday — typically the day with lower attendance for the two-day event — had great crowds, too, he said. Temperatures reaching the 50-degree mark didn't hurt, he said.While interest in the ski jump club and tournament always increases during Olympic years, the last time Brown said he could recall such large crowds was when Eddie the Eagle — Eddie Edwards, a British ski jumper — helicoptered in for the event following the 1988 Calgary Olympics.There were a lot of people down there," Brown said of Sunday's audience. "It was jammed.While shuttle buses transported attendees from the Fox River Grove Metra station and the nearby Jewel grocery parking lot, many visitors parked where they could find a spot and walked to the club grounds.Others got there early to save a space and tailgate in the parking lots.Paula Mutert, of Caledonia, was there with a group of friends, sitting around a bonfire before the event began. It was her first year, but her friends had been there before, she said.One of their group arrived at 7 a.m. to ensure good parking — and good tailgating. It was the perfect reason to get together on a Sunday in January, Mutert said.It is like getting together for Bears football," her friend Kim Lynch said.Cary Carpenter, of Algonquin, said he's attended the ski jump winter tournament for 20 years and several friends have used the club's ski jump.Have I ever done it? No," Carpenter said, drawing out the 'no' for emphasis.He said he's also attended summer practices had no problem with the less-than-balmy weather.It is a beautiful day with a picturesque view" of the jumps, he said.Paul Struck, who has a view of the ski jump from his Lake Barrington house, said the only time he hasn't been at the tournament in 16 years was when the event was canceled for lack of snow. He even has the buttons that serve as event tickets to prove it, he said.The club is hoping the three Olympic athletes — Kevin Bickner, 21, of Wauconda, Casey Larson, 19, of Barrington, and Mike Glasder, 28, of Cary — spur membership interest, Brown said.Our purpose, our mission, is to help get kids and educate kids on the art of the sport. We are very hopeful and have already see an increase in the interest from locals in our area, in getting their children involved," he said.While no public viewing parties for the Olympic competitions in February are planned, club members will likely watch together, he said.Now we can come together as a group and enjoy the fruits of our labor in creating successful athletes," Brown said.
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