DO IT LIKE NORWAY Wild finds different welcome
Take medals tally to 38, surpass US’ record of 37 set in 2010
Pyeongchang (South
Korea), Feb. 24: Ester Ledecka made history with an unprecedented snowboard and skiing double on Saturday, while Norway’s all-conquering team set a new record for medals at a Winter Olympics.
As President Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka descended on the Games in Pyeongchang, world champion Ledecka reigned supreme with a confident victory in the women’s parallel giant slalom.
It came after last week’s shock super-G win for Ledecka, daughter of a Czech rock star and composer, who has stunned ski purists and confounded logic by taking gold in two very different events.
With Saturday’s win, Ledecka joins Thorleif Haug and Johan Groettumsbraten as the only athletes to achieve a multi-sport double at the Winter Games. Both Norwegians won in crosscountry and Nordic combined.
As Ledecka rewrote the rules, Norway took bronze in the inaugural alpine skiing team event to reach 38 medals, breaking the record of 37 set by the United States in 2010.
Norway, led by their peerless cross-country skiers, have enjoyed a barnstorming Olympics. One day before the closing ceremony, they top the table with Germany on 13 golds, but with a vastly superior overall medals total.
Norway’s haul was also boosted when Kristin Skaslien and Magnus Nedregotten were promoted to bronze in the mixed doubles curling. — AFP Pyeongchang (South Korea), Feb. 24: It was a feel-good love story about snowboarders that made Russia smile. Four years later, Vic Wild and Alena Zavarzina are still married and still riding. But boy did this get complicated.
Wild, the American-born rider who now competes for Russia, finished out of the medals, same as his wife, at the parallel giant slalom Saturday, closing a sad chapter to a journey that began as a fairy tale but turned into a drama about cheating, doping and figuring out who was to blame.
Wild knew he wasn’t involved. But since the Sochi Games, conversation about Russia and the Olympics has centered on the doping scandal that implicated dozens of Russians athletes.
“I always knew that I was clean,” Wild said.
But he said he didn’t receive official word that he was eligible until Feb. 1
“I feel like, with the gold medals, when the Olympics come, I’m a representative of the Olympics,” he said. “I feel like I’ve got their back. And they don’t have my back. All I needed to hear was, ‘What’s going on?’ They didn’t do anything for me. It makes me feel like I’m, in a sense, just another unit for them to create profits off of.”
Meanwhile, Zavarzina, who finished fourth in her event, did not come through the interview area. When asked if she endured the same sorts of uncertainty as Wild he said: “Probably. But I don’t know for sure.” —AP