Winter Olympics

[SteveW]

Noticed a story yesterday that they are expecting to put a joint Korean team in this Olympics - never convinced by this kind of politicing.

Not to mention the fact that it seems fairly ridiculous when North Korea had a grand total of 2 Winter Olympians at the 2010 games so it would be nothing more than a token gesture anyway.

[Gas1883]

Attended the Winter Olympics in France in...er...92? Went for the downhill - it was boring as shit and we ended up just having a snowball fight amongst each other. Reckon the ice skating would be fun to watch, although imagine tickets will be astronomical for stuff like that. And there's always curling I suppose. All in all, doesn't hold huge excitement for me. It's just not the summer Olympics though, when late night sessions watching little weightlifting and what have you are happy memories indeed!

I agree, it just ain't the summer Olympics.

For the next several years the Korea press will be full of stories about Korean mums pushing their daughters to become the next Yu-Na.

[eujin]

The countdown has begun in earnest now in Germany. Moon Jae-in is appearing on TV ads wishing everyone peace on Earth and the German state broadcaster has 10 do's and don'ts for visitors to the Winter Olympics; don't wear colourful socks, watch out for the soju, every man for himself on the buses, don't stop at zebra crossings and this one,

Apropos Taxi: Murmeln oder das ungenaue Aussprechen Ihres Zielortes könnte dafür sorgen, dass sie ganz woanders hingefahren werden. Am besten zeigen Sie den gewünschten Ort auf einer Karte. Ein Beispiel aus der Metropole Seoul: Dort gibt es die Bezirke Sinchon (gesprochen "Sin-CHOWN") und Sincheon (gesprochen "Sin-CHAWN"). Viele Taxifahrer sprechen kein Englisch. Oft kommen Sie mit der U-Bahn leichter an ihr Ziel.

Basically translated, taxi drivers get confused about where you want to go, because many places have similar sounding names. Better take the metro.

The maddest bit is they suggest showing the driver a map. Has anyone ever had success with this? I've shown Korean taxi drivers maps and still ended up in completely the wrong place. I suppose it helps to be going somewhere sensible, not a K3 match, and nowadays with satnav even that might work.


It's going to be wall-to-wall luge and biathlon coverage here in Germany.

[MipoFanatic]

Don't wear colourful socks?

[eujin]

Don't wear colourful socks?

"1) Bunte Socken? Das könnte peinlich werden. Denn in einem Tempel, einem Teehaus und vielen Restaurants müssen Sie in Korea Ihre Schuhe ausziehen."

Temples don't like colourful socks.

[eujin]

Korea is too cold for Canadians.
http://www.bbc.com/sport/winter-olympics/42885124

Pussies

[MipoFanatic]

I expect that the Canadian skeleton athletes are softies, given that the best/newest track in Canada is near Vancouver.

It's the best winter Olympic sport, by the way.

One of the things I'm curious about is whether the bobsleigh and skeleton "World Cups" will now stop in Asia. Japan built a sliding track in Nagano but it's never been part of the World Cups, as far as I know. It gets very little use and is in rather poor shape. With tracks in Sochi, Nagano and now Pyeongchang, it's likely time to expand the circuit beyond Canada/US and the three stops in Western Europe - although that could make touring costs much more expensive in a sport with very little funding support for athletes.

Interesting to see Yoon Sung-bin won the recent World Cup season, beating out Latvia's Martins Dukurs. The missus and I saw Yoon at the North American Cup (third division) at Whistler a little over five years ago, back when he was just a few weeks into his skeleton career. They were selling tickets for the World Cup (first division), giving free entry for the Intercontinental Cup (second division), and not even bothering to promote the North American Cup. Naturally, being the sport saddo that I am, we went to the latter. The mountain didn't bother to leave the ski lift on for people returning down to Whistler Village, and since we didn't drive, we had to walk down the mountain streets in almost pitch-black. It was so cold that our phone batteries gave out and we couldn't use them as a flashlight on our way down.

[eujin]

German-born Aileen Frisch (아일린 프리슈) was in the Korean mixed luge team as they achieved a very respectable 9th place (Germany won gold, wall-to-wall coverage...) She became Korean in 2016. Apparently she's not a great fan of spicy food but her favourite K-pop band is Big Bang.

The free skating doubles gold medal was won by Germany's Aliona Savchenko and Bruno Massot, with a new world record score. She grew up in Ukraine and represented them at the 2002 Olympics. He grew up in France, became German at the end of 2017 and struggled to understand the questions when being interviewed on German TV, accidentally starting his answer in English before giving just a one word reply in German.

[MipoFanatic]

Interesting to see Yoon Sung-bin won the recent World Cup season, beating out Latvia's Martins Dukurs.

Little bugger won the Olympic gold!

[MipoFanatic]

Bullying scandal!

[eujin]

Has anyone who's in Korea been to any events yet? Is there anyone in Korea still reading this forum?

I haven't heard the usual moaning in the Western media about the crowd sizes, so presumably that means they've been OK.

[eujin]

Das Wunder von Pyeongchang (Gangneung)


Germany's B team beats Canada's D team and is headed to the gold-medal game.

[Crane]

Has anyone who's in Korea been to any events yet? Is there anyone in Korea still reading this forum?

I haven't heard the usual moaning in the Western media about the crowd sizes, so presumably that means they've been OK.

Well,

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-olym ... SKCN1G00J0

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/15/spor ... empty.html

http://www.dw.com/en/winter-olympics-ho ... a-42579979

[eujin]

Well,

yeah, I must have missed those. Knowing what we all know about Korean sporting preferences I was probably worried the attendances would be pitiful. Western journalists would be perplexed at how some events were packed out to hysterical levels while other events were completely empty except for a few ajummas who wandered in by mistake, especially with the low temperatures and a lot of night-events for the European TV market. That doesn't seem to have happened. The Western media has been a lot less rude than they were about Sochi and the main stories seem to have been mostly about the sporting results (at least what I've seen, except for the North Korean palaver). The area around Pyeongchang isn't the most populous part of the peninsula (it's no Vancouver or Turin) and driving all the way back to Seoul or elsewhere after a night-time event probably wasn't popular.

I spent the first few days trying to figure out if there was actual natural snow at the skiing events or whether they hadn't just sprayed snow far enough away from the piste that you couldn't tell from the TV. Still not sure what the answer to that one was.

[SteveW]

I have barely seen any of these Olympics... wasn't really covered in Bangkok when I was on holiday and haven't really got into it other than watching a couple of the curling matches. I was a bit surprised to see empty seats in the arenas but never can tell with these things if they are unsold tickets or people who didnt turn up or only want to see part of the session or whatever