Olympics stuck in middle of North Korea uncertainty

As the rhetoric and the fear ratchet up over North Korea, the next Olympic Games loom in the not-too-distant future, now less than six months away.

The 2018 Winter Olympics will be held in Pyeongchang, South Korea, which sits practically on the doorstep of North Korea, just 40 miles south of the Demilitarized Zone separating the north from the south.

As of now, those Games are on schedule to begin Feb. 9 and end Feb. 25. Athletes from around the world are training every day under that assumption. They know, as anyone who has followed the Olympics does, that the only reason the Olympic Games have ever been canceled has been due to world war.

The 1916 Summer Olympics were not held because of World War I, and the 1940 and 1944 Winter and Summer Games were canceled because of World War II.

The Olympics have otherwise carried on during all kinds of other conflicts, including regional wars involving the United States and Russia, and boycotts led by the United States and the then-Soviet Union.

But, as long as there is uncertainty surrounding the alarming developments between North Korea and the U.S., there naturally will be uncertainty about the upcoming Winter Olympics.

For Olympic athletes, there is nothing new about that.

“Unfortunately there is never a way to avoid the political stressors even in the athlete bubble, especially with our current political climate,” U.S. Olympic bronze medal-winning luger Erin Hamlin told USA TODAY Sports in a text Wednesday afternoon. “It is an uneasy feeling hearing so much animosity going back and forth but the only thing I can do is my job. I can’t control what happens on that scope.”

The U.S. Olympic Committee is monitoring developments, as it always does before an upcoming Games.

“Each host city presents a unique challenge from a security perspective,” spokesman Patrick Sandusky said Wednesday morning.