WINTER WONDERS
Dave Feschuk’s Pyeongchang highs and lows,
PYEONGCHANG, SOUTH KOREA— For Canadians, the 2018 Winter Olympics provided some hard-to-fathom results. The teams in the maple leaf suffered crushing defeats in hockey and curling. And yet despite those bread-and-butter disappointments, Canada had plenty of jam. Canadians won 29 medals here — three more than in Vancouver in 2010, four more than in Sochi four years ago. Here’s a look back:
BIGGEST STARS
When Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir arrived at Incheon Airport to begin their Olympic journey three weeks ago, they were greeted like local heroes. By the time they were done performing — becoming the most decorated ice dancers in history by skating as one — they had reaffirmed their status as global icons. Starmaking isn’t always a Winter Games strength. There are no Usain Bolt- or Michael Phelps-level transcendants here. But Virtue and Moir are a rare tandem who, if this is their last Olympics, will be sadly missed.
BEST NEW EVENT
Canadians were certainly appreciative of the advent of Olympic mixed doubles curling; gold from Kaitlyn Lawes and John Morris kept Canada from being held medal-free in a sport it traditionally dominates. But the best new addition to the Games was big air snowboarding. As spectacles go, it’s a stunner — athletes sliding down a 49-metre ramp, the tallest of its kind in the world, before launching into tricks that, on the men’s side, featured 1,800-degree spins, or five complete revolutions. It didn’t hurt that Canada struck gold, Sebastien Toutant winning the men’s event in an upset.
WHAT NEEDS TO GO?
The Olympic hockey overtime formats. Ten minutes of four-on-four followed by a shootout simply doesn’t suffice for playoff-round games. Twenty minutes of four-onfour didn’t suffice to settle a onceevery-four-years rivalry between the U.S. and Canadian women. Make it longer. Or just switch to three-onthree. Heck, gradually go from threeon-three to two-on-two to one-on- one, a la some youth tournament formats, if it means abandoning the shootout. Too many good games have been ruined already.
WHAT SHOULD BE ADDED?
There are six sports being added to the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo — that’d be baseball, softball, surfing, skateboarding, sports climbing and karate. So the winter program, which has long been criticized as too thin, ought to be expanded at the 2022 Beijing Winter Games, too. There are simple, logical additions, like equalizing the number of men’s and women’s events in existing sports such as bobsled, luge and ski jumping. And then there are more exotic prospects making a run at inclusion, including synchronized skating, bandy and the intriguing natural-track luge.
BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT
Aksel Lund Svindal, the Norwegian skiing great, called it “strange” to compete in front of a tiny gathering of observers that was hardly comparable to the cowbell-ringing hordes common on the World Cup tour. Poor turnouts weren’t relegated to the ski hill. There were the usual culprits, including high prices, local apathy for the event and the long haul from South Korea’s main population centre in Seoul. Maybe the International Olympic Committee ought to rethink its ban on noisemakers; alpine isn’t alpine without some cowbell in the audio roll.
BEST CROWD
It wasn’t all tumbleweeds in seats. If there’s a memory to take away from these Games, it’s the special, frantic sound of the Korean crowd with Korean athletes in the field of play. The throng went nuts every time Korea’s men’s hockey team so much as breached the Canadian blue line in a group-stage game. And the pandemonium at the short-track venue, home of the host nation’s best winter sport, was next-level.
ANOTHER DISAPPOINTMENT
There was no there there. No epicentre of Olympic activity. Very little spirit in the local streets. A well-run Games that lacked the thump of a heart.
SCARIEST MOMENT
It was a terrifying crash, Austrian snowboarder Markus Schairer falling backwards and landing violently on his head and neck on the secondlast jump of his snowboard cross quarterfinals. And the diagnosis was just as chill-inducing: a broken neck. Still, after undergoing surgery to repair the damage to the fifth vertebrae in his neck, Schairer, 30, posted a message on Instagram complete with X-ray images that showed the plates and screws shoring up his skeletal system: “Pretty much like the Terminator,” quipped Schairer.
BEST ATHLETE
In the stuff of movies, Czech superwoman Ester Ledecka won the super-G on borrowed skis despite never having finished any higher than 19th in a World Cup super-giant slalom. Then she hopped upon a snowboard, presumably her own, and won gold in parallel snowboard. Said Ledecka on the age-old divide between the disciplines she unites: “When I’m skiing, I’m like ‘Damn snowboarders,’ and when I’m snowboarding I’m like ‘Damn skiers.’ ”
WORST CASE OF ENTITLEMENT
When Elizabeth Swaney did a laughably simple run down the halfpipe — skiing like a nervous intermediate among the trick-shredding elite — the backlash was swift. She’d essentially snuck into the Olympics, using her clearly considerable financial means to log finishes (generally lastplace ones) on the World Cup tour. Then came the counter-argument that Swaney was a misunderstood dreamer who, among her many flights of fancy, has run for governor of California and tried out for the Oakland Raiders cheerleading squad. OK. That doesn’t change the fact she’s a privileged loophole digger.
BEST VENUE CONCESSION
Olympic food stands are traditionally a wasteland of overpriced dreck. But Pyeongchang’s better than usual and Augusta National-esque when it comes to reasonable price tags. Beer went for a little over $4 a can and, depending on the venue, could be purchased in six packs — a popular choice among flag-wearing Canadian hockey fans. Another highlight: Super Mix Pop Corn — a conglomeration of regular popcorn mixed with random bursts of caramel corn, chocolate corn and hot-pink strawberry corn. The podium finishers, though, included dumplings — steamed won bronze, fried got silver. And the undisputed gold medallist: fish cake soup. Better than it sounds. Broth of the gods.