Pyeongchang Oly organizers fix map that omitted Japan
Boutiette still seeks gold at 47
TOKYO, Sept 28, (Agencies): South Korean organizers of the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics corrected a map on their official website after Japanese sports officials complained that Japan was missing.
The Japan Sports Agency said officials discovered the omission Wednesday, after receiving a number of calls from the public. The agency demanded a correction via the South Korean Embassy in Tokyo, agency official Masahide Katsumata said. Katsumata said Japan was not on the map when he checked early Wednesday.
The world map on the “Dream Program” section of the website for the 2018 Winter Olympics has since been corrected.
An official from the Pyeongchang organizing committee said Japan’s omission was a “simple mistake” caused by changes in image files when organizers updated the Olympic website in February.
“We’ll keep watching,” Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said.
The two countries have had past disputes over Japan’s wartime aggression and territorial issues.
Japan wants South Korea to stop using “East Sea” as the name of the waters between the two countries, which Tokyo says should be “Japan Sea.” The two countries also dispute ownership of a cluster of islands controlled by South Korea but also claimed by Japan.
The Korean names of those islands are still on another map on the Pyeongchang 2018 website. Suga called it “extremely inappropriate” and said Japan will keep protesting.
Boutiette
Seven-time X-Games snowboardcross champion Nate Holland, an American still seeking his first Olympic medal at age 39, laughs off fears about US-North Korea tensions as the Pyeongchang Games approach.
The Winter Olympics run from February 9-25 in South Korea but will be staged only 80km (50 miles) from where US troops are stationed on a heavily guarded border with North Korea.
US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un have exchanged insults amid raised tensions in recent days, but Holland still plans to have his wife and daughter there with him despite some early worries.
“You’ve got Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump, two level-headed guys, solving the world’s problems — what could go wrong?” Holland said. “I guess if we’re going down, we’re going down as a family.”
Holland, hoping to qualify for his fourth consecutive Olympics, won his first World Cup event in four years when he captured the preOlympic test event last February on the course where the Olympic event will be staged.
“Every hill has DNA and I agree with the DNA at Pyeongchang,” Holland said. “I’ll get a couple World Cup podiums, make the team then go to South Korea and throw down a few haymakers.”
North Korean Figure skating pair Ryom Tae-Ok and Kim Ju-Sik are bidding to become their nation’s first representatives at the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea after finishing third on Thursday in the short programme at the Nebelhorn trophy.
The pair, seen as the likeliest North Korean contenders for a spot in February’s Pyeongchang Games, produced a solid yet largely riskfree performance, scoring 60.19 points, to land on fifth place and will now wait for Friday’s free skating competition in Oberstdorf, Germany.
They looked visibly satisfied at the end of their performance to music by The Beatles for a second year running but were nervous as they waited for the scoring. They need to finish in the top four to qualify for Pyeongchang. Russians Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov are leading on 77.52 points.
K.C. Boutiette could become the oldest Olympic speedskater since 1924 at age 47 and win a long-sought medal thanks to a new event, the mass start that debuts at Pyeongchang.
But he might also settle for helping world mass start champion and US teammate Joey Mantia’s quest for gold if he gets that chance two months before his 48th birthday.
The man who inspired a legion of inline skaters to Olympic glory when he switched to ice for the 1994 Games has never won a medal.
Four-time Olympian Boutiette appeared done after a 2006 US team pursuit flop, but came out of retirement in 2014 with eyes on the mass start, where tactics and strategy mix with endurance and closing speed.
He took second last November in Nagano, becoming the oldest World Cup medalist by claiming his first tour podium since a 10,000m bronze in February 2004.
“I had a lot of luck on that mass start,” Boutiette said Wednesday. “I almost 100 percent called it a career. There are a lot of other things in my life. I want to be a dad and I want my wife to have her life back.”
She said, “It’s only a year. Keep going.” So he did, saying, “I want to finish on top. On top doesn’t necessarily mean winning.”
A Moscow court said on Thursday it had issued a warrant for the arrest of Grigory Rodchenkov, the former head of Russia’s anti-doping laboratory who alleged the existence of a scheme to cover up Russian athletes’ positive drug samples at the 2014 Winter Olympics.
Yunona Tsareva, a spokeswoman for Moscow’s Basmanny Court, told Reuters it had issued a warrant for the arrest in absentia of Rodchenkov, who now resides in the United States.