Event winners receive mascot prior to medals

PYEONGCHANG, SOUTH KOREA >> The joy on Jamie Anderson’s face as she celebrated her victory in women’s slopestyle snowboarding is a timeless Olympic moment. The cute little stuffed tiger in her right hand is a new twist.

After winning gold, silver or bronze, medalists at the Pyeongchang Games aren’t immediately presented with their hardware. Instead, they get Soohorang, a striped white tiger that is the mascot of this year’s Winter Olympics.

“I’m down with the tiger,” Anderson said laughing. “I feel like my spirit animal must be some kind of lion or tiger or maybe black panther. It’s going to be my new snuggle partner in crime.”

The white tiger is considered South Korea’s guardian animal. “Sooho” means “protection” in Korean while “rang” is part of the word for “tiger” and the last Korean letter in “Jeongseon Arirang,” which is a popular Korean folk song.

In most cases, athletes are transported from the venue to the Pyeongchang Olympic Plaza to receive their medals in an evening ceremony. But some medalists, like in men’s ski jumping or men’s luge, didn’t receive theirs until the following day because some competitions last late into the night.

Chris Mazdzer, who became the first American to win a medal in the men’s luge on Sunday, didn’t get his silver medal until Monday night.

“I had to wait almost 24 hours for this thing,” said Mazdzer, who was proudly showing off his silver Monday night. “I think now it’s finally set in . ... It’s incredible.”

Luge leader cautious

Ordinarily at an Olympics, the leader at the midway point of a luge competition is virtually guaranteed the gold medal.

Germany’s Natalie Geisenberger knows these are not ordinary times.

Geisenberger had the lead after Monday night’s first two runs, putting her in prime position to win a second straight Olympic title. But after seeing German star Felix Loch skid midway through the final run of the men’s race and lose his shot at a third consecutive gold medal, she knows nothing is assured.

“We saw what could happen if you make a little mistake,” Geisenberger said. “You lose big, big, big time.”

Geisenberger finished two runs in 1 minute, 32.454 seconds. She’ll take a lead of 0.12 seconds over Germany’s Dajana Eitberger into today’s final two runs, while Canada’s Alex Gough, Germany’s Tatjana Huefner and Erin Hamlin of the U.S. are also within a quarter-second of Geisenberger.

“It’s a great race,” said Hamlin, the bronze medalist at the Sochi Olympics four years ago who is retiring after these games. “Anything can happen.”

Curve 9 was Loch’s undoing on Sunday night, and it snagged a few of the women’s contenders as well perhaps most notably Americans Emily Sweeney and Summer Britcher.

Sweeney had a bad wreck in training on Sunday and was still mindful of it Monday, finishing the first two runs in 15th place. Britcher hit the wall hard in her first run, then rebounded to set a track record in the second and showed a ton of emotion afterward.

It’s the sixth consecutive Olympic women’s race where a German has held the lead at the midway point. Geisenberger is bidding to be the third woman to win consecutive Olympic golds, joining Steffi Martin Walter (1984, 1988) and Sylke Otto (2002, 2006).

Shiffrin’s new schedule

Mikaela Shiffrin’s pursuit of gold will start on a different day than everyone expected and in a different event, the slalom, which is her forte.

Of course, that’s assuming they ever get around to doing any racing at all in Alpine skiing. Each of the first two contests were postponed because of dangerous winds that exceeded 25 mph and the forecast predicts more of the same today and Wednesday.

“I am pretty sure,” men’s race director Markus Waldner said with a wry smile, “that soon, we will have a race.”

The latest schedule change came Monday, when the temperature was 5 degrees and the women’s giant slalom was shelved less than three hours before it was supposed to start. That followed Sunday’s postponement of the men’s downhill.

Now both of those races will be held Thursday, but on different hills, and Waldner said the weather should cooperate by then.