The top stories of this year’s Games
N. Korea, Russia among topics in Pyeongchang
The lead-up to the Pyeongchang Games has been dominated by talk of doping, Russian attempts to undermine the Olympic ideals and the looming threat of war on the Korean Peninsula. Fortunately, that will soon give way to triumphs on the mountains and ice, heartwarming displays of sportsmanship and the unity that is uniquely Olympic.
Taking both the good and the bad, on the field and off, here’s a look at some of the biggest storylines of the Pyeongchang Olympics:
Tensions with North Korea
An Olympics less than 50 miles from the border of a country that’s alarmed the international community with nuclear tests and missile launches, not to mention an increasingly combative back-and-forth with the president of the United States. What could possibly go wrong?
As dire as the tensions with North Korea seem, the International Olympic Committee is actually wellequipped to deal with this. Seoul hosted the Summer Olympics in 1988, if you remember, and those Games went off without a hitch.
Granted, the international landscape is far different now, and Donald Trump is no Ronald Reagan. But security threats have become part of the Olympics’ reality since 9/11. There were snipers on rooftops in Salt Lake City, the first Games after 9/11, and heavy security in Athens, where the close proximity to the Middle East left the Olympics particularly vulnerable.
And who can forget the Black Widows, suicide bombers who Russian officials feared had slipped inside the security zone for the Sochi Olympics?
A nuclear attack or a ground war presents a very different threat, of course. But IOC and South Korean officials were persistent in their efforts to defuse tensions, and they appear to have been successful after Kim Jong Un promised in early January to send athletes to Pyeongchang.
This is a significant breakthrough, the hope being Kim won’t initiate or provoke military action when North Korea’s participation in Pyeongchang has generated so much goodwill.
The only North Korean athletes who have qualified are a pairs team in figure skating, but the IOC said it would be willing to grant wild-card entries. North and South Korea have proposed fielding a combined team for women’s hockey, and South Korea also has floated the idea of the two countries marching together in the opening ceremony.
The Olympic movement at its finest.
Russia
When is a ban not really a ban? When the IOC is trying to placate the public while keeping the peace with Russia, one of the largest and most influential countries in the Olympic movement.
Technically, Russia is banned from Pyeongchang as punishment for a widespread, state-sponsored doping system that undermined the integrity of recent Games, Sochi in particular, and made a mockery of the Olympic ideals. In reality, the only thing that will be missing is the Russian anthem and flag during medal ceremonies.
Russia is still expected to have close to a full-size team in Pyeongchang, after the IOC said athletes who have not been sanctioned and can prove they’ve been subject to a legitimate drug-testing program could compete as an “Olympic athlete from Russia.” That’s different than athletes from other banned countries, who’ve been identified as “Independent Olympic Athletes.”
The Russian — sorry, OAR — team will march together in the opening ceremony and have OAR on its uniforms. And if the Russians behave themselves and ask nicely, the IOC might even let them have their flag back for the closing ceremony.
Yes, the IOC sure does know how to put its foot down.
Doping
While KGB officers won’t be skulking around the Pyeongchang lab, making dirty samples disappear through a mouse hole, ensuring effective doping control remains one of the IOC’s biggest challenges. A scathing report by the World Anti-Doping Agency found “serious failings” in testing efforts at the Rio Olympics, with almost 500 fewer tests carried out than were originally planned.
Many of the shortcomings were blamed on budget cuts by Brazilian organizers, though there was a fair amount of sheer ineptitude, too. If you have to ask a team official or a teammate where an athlete is for unannounced, out-of-competition testing, well, it’s not really unannounced, then, is it?
South Korean officials are well aware that their testing program will be under a very large and public microscope, with Sports Vice-Minister Roh Tae-kang promising last fall that Pyeongchang would have the best anti-doping measures of any Winter Olympics. Roh said doping control officers and staff have been preparing for months, including analyzing 1,300 samples from test events and other competitions.
“They’ve so far gone through five intensive training sessions,” Roh said at a WADA Foundation Board meeting in November.
Craig Reedie, who is WADA’s president and an IOC member, said in November that he expected Pyeongchang’s anti-doping program would be run well. Considering the high praise initially heaped on the Sochi lab, however, it’s probably best to take Reedie’s assurances with a grain of salt. One found in those tainted Russian samples, perhaps.
Dominant duo
Expect to see a lot of Lindsey Vonn and Mikaela Shiffrin during the Pyeongchang Olympics.
Much like Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt in the Summer Games, Vonn and Shiffrin are the dominant stories of the Winter Olympics. The American skiers are the best at what they do, maybe the best ever, and these Olympics could be their defining moments — albeit for different reasons.
Only Ingemar Stenmark (86) has more career victories than Vonn, and with 78, she’s not far behind the Swede. She’s won four overall World Cup titles, and her 20 World Cup crystal globes — given for season titles in each discipline, as well as the overall — are a record for any skier, male or female.
As dominant as Vonn has been on the World Cup circuit, she’s been equally unlucky at the Olympics. She has two medals, a gold in the downhill and bronze in super-G in Vancouver. But she finished eighth in the downhill in Turin two days after being airlifted to a hospital following a scary crash in training. A knee injury kept her out of the Sochi Games, where she’d been favored to win multiple medals.
Shiffrin is the youngest skier to win the Olympic slalom, claiming gold in Sochi when she was 18. Since then, she’s won two World Cup slalom titles, as well as the overall title last season.
But what she’s done this year has been simply mind-boggling. Shiffrin had already won 10 races as of Jan. 15 — that’s a good career for most skiers — including her last five in a row. Her victory string includes her first downhill win — in only her fourth start, no less — and means she will be a threat to win multiple medals in Pyeongchang.
The competition and the humanity it reveals has always been the best part of the Olympics. The IOC can only hope the Pyeongchang Games produce more of those memorable moments.
Maybe that no-sleep, adrenaline-fueled statement in Sochi about wanting to win five gold medals wasn’t so outlandish, after all.
No NHL
No Ovie or Sid the Kid. No Toews or Kane. No Auston Matthews or Connor McDavid. No one from the NHL at all.
Allowing NHL players to compete at the Olympics has been wildly popular — with fans and athletes alike. It’s also essentially two weeks of free promotion for the league, which still struggles for attention throughout most of the United States.
But NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman has long hated having to shut the league down during the Games, and owners weren’t thrilled at their star players risking injury and their arenas sitting empty. So, despite pleas from the International Hockey Federation and lobbying from the players, Bettman took the NHL’s puck and went home.
Players from other professional leagues are still eligible, as are college athletes. While it might make for a more competitive tournament — it was all but a given that Canada and the United States would reach the medals round with rosters loaded with NHL All-Stars — the new format doesn’t generate the same excitement as Hasek vs. Gretzky or Sidney Crosby’s golden goal. The Olympics is supposed to showcase the best athletes, not an elevated version of a beer league.
Gay athletes
Regardless of how he does in Pyeongchang, Adam Rippon has already made history.
The figure skater is the first openly gay man to represent the United States at the Winter Olympics. He’s not likely to be the only one, either, with Sochi slopestyle silver medalist Gus Kenworthy also expected to qualify.
LGBTQ rights and the safety of LGBTQ athletes was a significant concern at the Sochi Games. Russia made its intolerance of homosexuality plain in 2013, passing a law that banned the spread of gay “propaganda.” Two weeks before the Games, the Sochi mayor said there were no gays in the city.
But the Olympic movement, like society overall, is far more accepting now than even four years ago. The IOC added sexual orientation to Principle Six, its nondiscrimination clause, after the Sochi Games. The United States, Australia, Germany, Ireland, Scotland and Finland have all legalized gay marriage since 2014.
And while Rippon and Kenworthy are happy to be trailblazers, they want everyone to know they are athletes first. Asked about being a gay athlete, Rippon said, “It’s exactly like being a straight athlete. Lots of hard work, but usually done with better eyebrows.”
Missing Holcomb
Steven Holcomb wasn’t just the most successful bobsledder in U.S. history. He was the heart and soul of the American sliding team.
Holcomb, who ended a 52-year gold-medal drought when he drove the “Night Train” to victory in Vancouver, died suddenly in May while the team was at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Lake Placid, N.Y. His death devastated lugers and bobsledders alike, each of whom had a story about Holcomb being there to provide encouragement or celebrate their accomplishments.
The U.S. sliders have dedicated this season to Holcomb, whose absence will loom large in Pyeongchang. It will be the first time since 2002 that Holcomb will not be part of the U.S. sliding squad.
Ice is slippery
The goal for U.S. speedskaters in Pyeongchang is a modest one: Do better than Sochi.
It would be hard to do much worse. Speedskating, particularly short track, has been a sport the Americans could always count on to produce a haul of medals. Remember Eric Heiden, Dan Jansen, Bonnie Blair and Apolo Anton Ohno, to name a few? But the Americans had a meltdown of epic proportions in Sochi.
The long-track team didn’t win a single medal, the first time in 30 years the Americans came home empty-handed. The short-track team got one, a silver in the men’s relay.
There was plenty of blame to go around, from the decision to train at altitude when the Games were at sea level, to new suits that hadn’t been tested before the Olympics, to a schedule that had the Americans hopscotching around the world in the month before Sochi.
But no one wants to hear excuses. They want to hear “The Star-Spangled Banner,” preferably on the playlist at the speedskating venues in Pyeongchang.
Rare medals
Europe, beware. The Americans are coming for your medals.
Biathlon and cross-country skiing have long been dominated by European athletes. Of the 693 medals that have been awarded in the two sports, all but 12 have gone to athletes from Europe. The U.S. has never won a medal, of any color, in biathlon, while its only one in cross-country skiing was Bill Koch’s silver in the 30 kilometers, way back in 1976.
But the Americans have slowly been gaining ground in both sports, and that could mean some precious hardware in Pyeongchang.
Lowell Bailey became the first American to win a world title in biathlon, claiming gold in the men’s 20kilometer individual last year. The U.S. women have become regulars on the cross-country podium in the past four years, including Jessie Diggins and Sadie Bjornsen going first and third in a 5-kilometer World Cup race last year, the first time two U.S. women shared the podium in a distance event.
Kikkan Randall and Sophie Caldwell did the same in a sprint race in 2014.
Diggins also won two medals at last year’s world championships, a silver in the sprint free and a bronze in the team sprint classic with Bjornsen. Diggins and Randall were the first Americans to claim gold at the world championships, winning the team sprint freestyle in 2013.
Biathlon and cross-country. They’re not just for the Europeans anymore.
Interest
The IOC needs a win as badly as any athlete competing in Pyeongchang.
Whether it’s the white elephants of Rio, the Russian doping crisis that won’t end, the shady dealings surrounding past bids or the countries turning up their noses at future ones, it’s been one piece of bad news after another for the IOC the last few years. Now comes a Games halfway around the world, in a time zone that will be a challenge for pretty much everyone in Europe and North America, featuring few athletes with crossover appeal.
Not exactly the ideal scenario for the IOC to bolster its image.
One positive development is that NBC is finally giving up on its charade of tape delays. After years of viewers howling about not being able to see events live when the results were easily available on social media and the Web, NBC will stream all event coverage live. That’s right. Some 2,400 hours of coverage, and all of it can be seen as it happens.
The competition and the humanity it reveals has always been the best part of the Olympics. The IOC can only hope the Pyeongchang Games produce more of those memorable moments, and not more embarrassments that make the world question the future of the Olympic movement.