COLD REMEDIES
Five days in, the Winter Olympics are having trouble with the winter part
PYEONGCHANG — Five days into Pyeongchang 2018, the biggest problem of these Winter Olympics is something that everyone probably should have seen coming: Winter.
Bitter cold and harsh winds have impacted everything from the Opening Ceremony to some of the signature events, and have left organizers scrambling to keep schedules moving, in at least one instance leading to angry complaints from competitors.
The first sign that these would be a Games unlike others in recent memory — held in the decidedly moderate climate of Sochi and Vancouver — came days before the official opening, when a news conference at the main media centre was bogged down by questions about the weather. Would it be very cold? How cold was very cold? What should spectators do about the cold?
Bundle up, was basically the answer then, and it has continued to be a mantra. Temperatures are routinely reaching minus-15 degrees Celsius, colder at night when some events are held under the lights, and the retailers who sell hot pockets and similar products are doing a bang-up business.
If it was just a matter of forcing visitors to wear their woollies, the cold would be less of an issue, but it has already had a material impact on the Games themselves. The men’s downhill race, the traditional opener of the alpine contests, was moved from Monday morning due to high winds, with gusts up to 75 kilometres an hour, and is scheduled to go off on Thursday morning at Jeongseon Alpine Centre. But multiple training days have been cancelled, and even some of those that have been held took place on a truncated course, to keep skiers out of the dangerous winds at the top of the course.
The ladies’ giant slalom, another high-profile event that features big names like American star Mikaela Shiffrin, was similarly rescheduled due to high winds at the Yongpyong Alpine Centre.
Those two events have now been scheduled essentially on top of one another — the first ladies giant slalom scheduled for Thursday morning at Yongpyong, then the men’s downhill at Jeongseon, then the second ladies G-S back at Yongpyong. For the broadcasters that pay the International Olympic Committee huge sums of money to televise such events, having them delayed and then ultimately compressed into a short live window is far from ideal.
Those television concerns are the only explanation anyone can figure out for why the ladies’ snowboard slopestyle finals went ahead on Monday morning, despite fierce winds at Phoenix Snow Park. (For those keeping track, that is three separate venues, spread an hour’s drive from one another, that have been buffeted by strong winds.)
Or rather, that’s the only explanation that anyone can figure out, other than the officially stated one.
The International Ski Federation said it was “aware that the weather conditions for (Monday’s) ladies’ slopestyle competition were challenging for the competitors. The first priority for FIS is the safety of the athletes and FIS would never stage a competition if this could not be assured.”
Sure assurances are difficult to square with what actually took place on Monday, when only nine out of 50 attempted runs at Phoenix were completed without some sort of crash. Riders were repeatedly blown in mid-air either beyond or short of their intended landing zones, and several of the competitors said afterward that the conditions were too dangerous for a slopestyle event, which by its nature throws riders high into the air.
Finland’s Enni Rukajarvi, who won the bronze medal but declared herself mostly happy that she made it down the course in one piece said of the organizers: “They should have cancelled it, or moved it.”
And Canada’s Spencer O’Brien, who couldn’t complete either of her runs, said the decision to hold the event was particularly puzzling given that officials decided a day earlier to cancel qualifying runs due to strong winds.
“It’s interesting because they postponed us yesterday and the weather was worse today,” O’Brien said. “But that’s kind of the way it goes sometimes.”
It is the way it goes, yes, when factors other than rider safety are given priority when deciding on scheduling. It is almost certainly not a coincidence that, with American Jamie Anderson as the defending gold medallist in slopestyle, the final was scheduled for a window that would put it in prime-time in much of the United States.
The forecast in Pyeongchang on Wednesday is for temperatures around freezing at midday and dropping to -12C at night. Strong winds are also expected.