Drones event shown on tape

‘Logistical’ issue affects ceremony

An army of high-flying drones expected to light up the sky at the opening ceremony of the Olympics was grounded.

Viewers of NBC’s tapedelayed broadcast in the United States still saw it, but it was a pre-recorded version.

Intel Corp. was expected to launch 300 drones as part of an extravagant light show, but those plans were scrapped. International Olympic Committee spokesman Mark Adams said Saturday that the drones were not deployed Friday night because of an “impromptu logistical change.”

NBC aired a light show, but it was from Intel’s launching of more than 1,200 drones in December in Pyeongchang. That didn’t keep the television network from highlighting the moment. NBC tweeted on its official @NBCOlympics page: “A swarm of drones brings us one of the most incredible sights of the #OpeningCeremony.”

TV rating mixed

The opening ceremony reached 27.8 million viewers on NBC, a number that inched up to 28.3 million with digital viewers. That’s down from the 31.7 million who watched the opening in Sochi, Russia, four years ago, but 6 percent higher than the Summer Olympics ceremony in Rio de Janiero in 2016.

Cyber attack

An International Olympic Committee official used the word “attack” to describe an outage that hit the Internet and Wi-Fi systems of the Pyeongchang Olympics just minutes before the opening ceremony. The network at some venues was disabled for several hours. Organizers initially declined to use the charged word. IOC spokesman Mark Adams is now calling it an attack but says “the best industry practice is you don’t talk about an attack at this stage.”

Downhill postponed

Fierce wind forced the Olympic men’s downhill to be postponed, moving the marquee race from its traditional place opening the Alpine program. The first race on an 11-event Alpine schedule was shelved three hours before the start time at the Jeongseon hill, and organizers said they now would try to hold the men’s downhill Thursday.

“It’s imperative with fair conditions and I applaud the decision. Thanks,” Kjetil Jansrud of Norway, one of the gold medal favorites, wrote on Twitter.

Racers risk being blown off a safe racing line on a course where they hit speeds of about 75 mph.