Garlic Girls almost tasting gold
Canada may be out of women’s curling, but the South Koreans have taken up the charge, reaching the final while becoming national celebrities.
The team, made up of skip Kim Eunjung, 27, sisters Kim Kyeong-ae, 24, and Kim Yeong-mi, 26, Kim Seon-yeong, 24, and alternate Kim Choci, have been dubbed the Garlic Girls by the Korean press, a nod to where the top four players come from, a small farming region called Uiseong County that is known for its production of garlic.
The underdogs came into the Winter Games ranked eighth in the world, but have beaten the likes of Canada, Sweden and Japan to reach the gold-medal game against Sweden.
The Korean rink is already the most successful Asian curling team in an Olympic Games. China earned bronze at the 2010 Vancouver Games.
The Garlic Girls have been largely sheltered from the international frenzy, having switched off their phones during the Games and being protected by a coach who is keenly aware that curling is as much a mental game as a physical one.
There are also quirky nicknames in the fairy-tale story — Yogurt, Pancake, Steak, Sunny and ChoCho, which started as a gag between the longtime friends, an easy way for international media identify five women with the same surname. There is the pair of oversized glasses worn by their skip. And then there’s the garlic, which the South Koreans consider a health food that boosts stamina. Fans of the team told both the New York Times and Bloomberg News that they believe the source of the team’s nickname has played into their success.
The Garlic Girls will play for Olympic gold on Sunday. South Korea had picked up 12 medals as of Friday, 11 of which had come from speedskating.
STAR QUALITY: American figure skater Mirai Nagasu started her Olympic campaign with a bit of history, becoming the first American woman to complete a triple Axel at the Games. Her time here ended in much less glorious fashion.
In a bizarre interview after the 24-yearold finished a disappointing 10th in women’s figure skating Friday, Nagasu took credit for “saving” the United States in the team figure skating event — they took home bronze — and called her final performance an audition for the reality television show Dancing with the Stars.
“I would like to be on Dancing With the Stars because I am a star,” said Nagasu, who stuck her triple Axel in the team event but left it out of her long program Friday. “I made history here by landing the first triple Axel for a U.S. lady at the Olympics, so I think that is a big deal. I hope I get more opportunities to let my personality just shine.”
Nagasu later walked back from the comments, tweeting she had “such a newfound respect for all the Olympians around me.”
“Sometimes you just have to take it all in with a smile on your face.”
CELEBRITY FANBOY: Even celebrities get star-struck sometimes; that certainly seems to be the case with Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds.
Reynolds, like the rest of Canada, was paying attention earlier this week when skier Cassie Sharpe won gold in the halfpipe and skaters Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir did the same in the ice dance.
“Go@ Team Canada !!@ Cassie Sharpe is a legend — makin’ it look easy,” the funnyman posted on Twitter on Tuesday. “And thank you @tessavirtue & @ScottMoir for agreeing to raise my children as your own.”
Sharpe responded nearly immediately, tweeting that the shout-out was “almost” as good as winning gold. But it was Virtue who kept the laughs going with her response on Thursday.
“And here I’ve been wracking my brain to come up with a post-competition career path . . . Scott, get the minivan!” she tweeted back at Reynolds, a joke that would likely thrill the legions of fans who have spent the Winter Games hoping Virtue and Moir are a couple both on and off the ice.
QUOTE OF THE DAY: “I know that it would mean a lot to him to be back here. A part of him is in South Korea always.” — American skier and bronze medallist Lindsey Vonn, who scattered some of her grandfather’s ashes at the Pyeongchang Winter Games. Don Kildow, Vonn’s grandfather, served during the Korean War, died in November.