THE PERFECT OLYMPICS IN AN IMPERFECT PLACE
For all of its high-tech smiles and big sporting moments, that people-first pulse was missing
PYEONGCHANG — There is usually a distinct impression left at the end of every Olympic Games. You either love it or you hate it. It grabs you and pulls you in or it leaves you cold and somewhat indifferent.
I was mesmerized by Sydney in the summer of 2000 and by Lillehammer in the winter of 1994, cities and countries that came to life as Olympic hosts, made you want to be one of them: Even tired as we are at the end of every Games, you didn’t want to go home. You weren’t ready to say goodbye.
I couldn’t wait to leave Albertville in 1992 or Atlanta in 1996 — disorganized games run by disinterested people.
And now we are here, as the Games of Pyeongchang come to an end, and there is neither one extreme nor the other to feel. It’s not ambivalence but it’s not the giddy excitement of Vancouver on the final Olympic Sunday of the 2010 Games. Mostly, these were an Olympics of wonderful moments — which is all Olympics, really — but instead a Games of incongruity and contradiction, a Games without feel.
In fairness, these have been a rather perfect Olympics in a most imperfect place. The infrastructure worked, which on own is often miraculous. The Athletes Village got high marks from those who lived there. The buses ran when the buses were supposed to run. The venues were of reasonable calibre and easily accessed and the controversy surrounding the Games was mostly minimal or Russian or both.
Staging an Olympics can be like dealing with a Rubik’s Cube on performance enhancing drugs. It’s that complicated. It moves that fast. And the Pyeongchang organizers pulled that part off impeccably.
But Olympics aren’t just about buildings and buses and structure and technology and television. They’re about people. They’re about an event with its own pulse. They’re about creating buzz. And this is where, Pyeongchang never found its way.
There were too many empty seats at too many events, some of that attributed to the cost of tickets, some of that attributed to the scheduled time of events, a lot of it attributed to the lack of interest there is in winter sports here.
When Canada played the U.S., in the women’s hockey gold medal game, with an historical ending and a shootout for the ages, the building was two-thirds full with Americans and the Canadians. The Koreans just didn’t seem to care.
They didn’t care for a lot of the winter disciplines but curling and the unlikely story of the Garlic Girls pulled in the whole country here. This became the hot ticket in Gangneung, the coastal half of these games. That and short track speed skating were the only hot tickets of the Games.
The Garlic Girls, four curlers with Spice Girls-like nicknames and cat-like clothing, were called Pancake and Sunny and Yogurt Annie and Steak. When they advanced to the gold medal game in extra ends, the country exploded in sporting excitement: It was one of the few memorable moments for the host country, which really won its largest gold medal in friendly volunteers and youthful enthusiasm.
Every volunteer could say ‘hello’ or ‘good morning’ often with a warm smile on a cold day, even if they couldn’t say anything else in English, which has become, over time, the language of the Games.
The other Korean moment to cherish: The first hockey game for Korea’s women’s
team, in a rink full of North Korean cheerleaders, with the players from the north and south politically forced to play together for the very first time. Maybe it was just for one night, and for the combined Koreans, just one tournament, but it brought two enemies together in the name of sport. And the crowd, not knowing hockey at all, cheered everything from faceoffs to broken sticks, the movement of the puck in any direction.
“This wasn’t just a hockey game,” IOC president Thomas Bach told the players, who lost 8-0 to Switzerland. “It was more than that.”
Whether it was, in fact, more than that will be determined over time, but entering the Games there was a certain fear about the geographical closeness between North and South Korea and the political problems that existed. If there were political problems here, no one was aware of them. “The players here,” said South Korean coach Sarah Murray, “were the real heroes of the Games.”
The historical notion of the Olympics is the Games bring people together but the reality normally is quite the opposite. It separates and distinguishes countries. What matters in one place, doesn’t resonate somewhere else. The gold medal wins in women’s hockey and men’s curling by the United States were considered historical and triumphant in the U.S. and somewhat disastrous by Canadian standards.
That’s how the world views sports here: Through its own prism and its own circumstances.
And always, there are breakthrough stars.
The biggest star of these Games should be Ester Ledecka of Czech Republic, who managed something that has never been done before. In an Olympic setting in which the impossible becomes a daily occurrence, Ledecka made history all her own.
She won a gold medal in skiing. And a gold medal in snowboarding. That might be like winning a gold medal in swimming and diving at the same Games.
“It takes a lot of effort to become a professional skier,” said Justin Reiter, her snowboard coach. “It takes a lot of effort to become a profes- sional snowboarder. And she does both with ease.”
She won two gold medals. Young cross-country skier Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo from Norway was the only athlete to win three gold medals here. The brave Canadian short-track speed skating rookie, Kim Boutin, came home with three medals, a story to write a book about and a Canadian flag to carry in the closing ceremony.
It doesn’t the matter the setting, the feel, the number of smiling kids you might or might not see, the Olympics provides no shortage of breathtaking greatness.
For Canada, these were an Olympics of glee and crushing disappointment. One does not balance the other. But the story might be, Canada won a record number of medals, could have won more, and in sports we hold dear to our national scope, hockey and curling, the results left us wanting more.
But before leaving here, I will remember more than podium performances; more than Alex Harvey come so close in cross country skiing three different times; more than the bravery of 20-yearold Canadian skater Gabrielle Daleman, who fell three times in her free skate routine and still came out to talk to media about it ; more than eating too much fried food with not enough napkins and my elusive search for artificial sweetener; more than the Tongan, who learned to cross country ski in three months, and then celebrated his 114th place finish in the 15-kilometre event.
But if there’s a face of these Games, other than the smiling volunteers, other than Ledecka, it is two different faces, really. The sporting moment that won’t leave me was the final of the ice dance, with the Canadian team of Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir having to be perfect to win gold. And then they were. They had to be effervescent and better than they’ve ever been before.
And they smiled and we smiled and the world smiled back. This wasn’t just about Canadian gold. In an absolute different way, it was world gold, with cameras clicking, the way Usain Bolt would capture gold, with drama and fun and beauty and the cameras not letting go. Not during their skate. Not after.
That’s the power of any Olympics. It can be too cold and too windy — as it was some days in the mountains here — or the ice can be terrible at two different hockey arenas, with pucks bouncing in all directions, but the show goes on. The show triumphs over drug cheats and corruption and scandal.
It always does.