Defining performances
Pyeongchang Games offered a lot to remember.
With the 2018 Winter Olympics over, here are the 10 greatest moments from the Games:
10. Gold!
Thirty-eight years to the day after the Miracle on Ice, the U.S. women’s hockey team had a decidedly less surprising if equally thrilling win of its own, this time defeating Canada in a goldmedal shootout thanks to Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson’s “Oops I didn’t it again” move. The victory was 20 years in the making and with a run of recent success over their arch- (and only) rivals, it could be the start of a new Olympic dynasty.
9. Felix flops
In sports, you never know. You think you know, but you don’t. Except when it came to luger Felix Loch. You knew the German superstar was going to win a medal in Pyeongchang and that medal would almost certainly be gold. He was the most dominant athlete at the Games. He led by a whopping 0.20 seconds going into his fourth and final run, in a sport measured by thousandths. It was over — and then it wasn’t. Loch hit a wall, slowed down and sputtered to the line, finishing fifth. There wasn’t a result so surprising over the fortnight.
8. Yuzuru Hanyu
Yuzuru Hanyu and American Dick Button are the only male figure skaters to go back-to-back at the Olympics. (Only two other women have pulled the feat either.) The Japanese skater was flawless en route to gold.
7. American curling
When the inevitable movie is made and Ron Swanson plays Matt Hamilton, there will be two climaxes: the tideturning win over Canada in the seventh game of the round-robin and then the end of the gold-medal match, when much-maligned skip John Shuster pushed the perfect stone to steal five points for Team USA, clinching the win. No American curling team had won gold. And no team had come back from a 2-4 start to win five straight either.
6. Shaun White
Not only did White put down the greatest halfpipe run in the greatest pressure situation an athlete can ever face, but landing it and getting gold was a triumph for Team USA: White’s win was the 100th in Winter Olympic history.
5. Marit Bjorgen
In her final games, the cross-country skier won five medals (the most of any athlete). She passed countryman Ole Einar Bjorndalen on the list of the most medals in Winter Olympic history (13) and then Sunday won the final race of the Games to tie Bjorndalen and Bjorn Dahle for most golds ever (8). Oh yeah, the gold also moved Norway to the top of the medal count. (It was the country’s 14th gold, which tied Norway with Germany. But since Norway had more silver, it won the medal count on a tiebreaker.) So, you know, a pretty successful Games for the most successful Winter Olympian ever.
4. The duel on ice
You all know the story by now: 17-year-old “veteran” destined for Olympic gold looks back to all of a sudden find a 15-year-old hot on her heels. The two Russians, with the same coaches, were both brilliant in their short and long programs, respectively, and when Evgenia Medvedeva walked off the ice at the end of the competition, there was every reason to think she’d held her ground and won the gold that was clearly hers just months before. Judges disagreed and gold went to Alina Zagitova.
3. Ester Ledecka
Czech snowboarder Ester Ledecka was a surprise winner in the women’s skiing super-G, the greatest upset in alpine skiing history. Ledecka started after the podium had seemingly been set. (The top 10womenallracesomewhere in spots 1 to 19. Ledecka started well after that. But the snowboard star somehow got to the bottom of the hill the fastest. Nobody was more stunned than her — she kept saying she didn’t believe it. Skis weren’t her thing. She was a snowboarder. She proved the latter later in the Olympic with a dominant gold in the parallel slalom, becoming the first woman to win a gold medal in two different sports at a Winter Olympics.
2. Virtue and Moir steal the show
It speaks to the beauty and pageantry of Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir that their tender, provocative and, seemingly, loving routines made the world want (wish?) that they were totally together and just pulling a fast one on us by saying their relationship was platonic. They were skating’s Ross and Rachel. Will they or won’tthey?Theysay“won’t,” but that last performance, when everything was on the line, was one of the most beautiful, pressure-packed things the Olympics has ever seen.
While other athletes have to channel their nerves, anticipation and passion into a race that’s conducive for expending energy, Virtue and Moir had to temper theirs as they danced with precision and were flawless for 4½ minutes, all while knowing that a single slip on the ice would be the difference between gold and silver. The Games were never as gripping as they were that night. Now marry each other already!
1. Jessica Diggins and Kikkan Randall
With the U.S. team down to its last chance, Diggins and Randall won the team sprint, the first Olympic gold medal for the U.S. cross-country team and the only medal of any color for the women.