Post by IceCat on Feb 6, 2018 10:55:48 GMT
The week we've all been waiting for has finally arrived! At least some of us have, anyway: ticket sales were at 75% as of the end of January as ordinary Koreans have been slow to catch the Olympic spirit this time around, unlike 30 years ago when Seoul hosted the Summer Olympics. This is the opening post in the open thread about the news and happenings from the Games, and to start I shall summarize the major issues that have transpired to this point.
First, the men's hockey competition will be significantly watered down as the NHL decided back in April of last year not to allow their players to be selected for their respective national teams. The main reason publically cited was a dispute over who would pay to insure the players during the Games, but the NHL wasn't happy that the league and more importantly its sponsors derived no benefit from participating because the IOC's sponsors have exclusivity. Since the major European leagues are still scheduling breaks to allow their players to be selected it may ultimately benefit them more than the North American teams, but handicapping the men's field is a crap shoot. What is certain is that the host nation's squad, bolstered by some North American-born players signed to domestic teams who were made naturalized citizens, is unlikely to progress out of its preliminary group since it also consists of Canada, Switzerland and the Czech Republic. I'll get to the women's tournament in a bit.
The next major issue concerns Russia. After reports surfaced in 2016 of a systematic cover up of Russian doping at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, a conspiracy so elaborate in its execution that it could only have been engineered by the state, the International Olympic Committee left it to individual sports federations as to whether Russian athletes would be excluded from that year's Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. In that case some sporting bodies, led by the IAAF (track and field), opted for a total ban while others demurred so long as the athletes in those sports could prove they were clean. The International Paralympic Committee, on the other hand, did ban Russia from the 2016 Paralympics, a ban which remains in place for this year's Winter Paralympics as well. As doping controls in Russia were still not back up to international standards as of December of last year the IOC decided to exclude the Russian Olympic Committee from PyeongChang but will allow individual Russian athletes who are certified as clean to participate under the banner Olympic Athletes of Russia, with the Olympic flag and anthem to be used. 168 athletes were cleared to take part, but that figure does NOT include Korean-born short-track speed skater Viktor Ahn, who was among a group banned at the last minute because even though they never had a positive result for a PED (performance enhancing drug) their biological passports are suspect because of continued suspicion surrounding Russia's doping lab.
Over the course of 2017 one of the main concerns was whether North Korea's belligerence would pose a threat to the Games as they held tests of their nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities, to the near universal consternation of the international community. Then at the start of this year came a surprising turn of events, initiated by the declaration during North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's New Year's speech that his country would reopen a hotline with the South, dormant for nearly two years, with the aim of negotiating the means by which North Korean athletes would take part in the Winter Olympics. There followed in relatively quick succession two negotiating sessions in Panmunjon which ironed out the details, which would include entry into the South of musicians and other cultural performers as well as a "cheer squad". While the South's president Moon Jae-in was eager to facilitate the exchanges in the hopes that greater inter-Korean cooperation on other matters would follow, including resolving the nuclear issue, his allies in Tokyo and Washington remain skeptical. When Japan's prime minister Shinzo Abe and US vice president Mike Pence attend the Opening Ceremony on Friday they'll be in the same stadium as the leader of North Korea's rubber-stamp parliament, 90 year old Kim Yong-nam, who is #2 in his country's hierarchy and will lead the official DPRK delegation. As if to keep up the rhetoric against the North one of Mr. Pence's guests will be Fred Warmbier, whose son Otto mysteriously fell into a coma a month after he was convicted by a North Korean court in 2016 of stealing a propaganda poster and who died in June 2017 six days after his still-comatose body was repatriated to the US.
The most visible signs of the slight thawing of inter-Korean relations will not only be the joint entry of athletes from both nations during the Opening Ceremony under the name "Korea" behind a unity flag, a scene not witnessed since the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin as well as that year's Asian Games in Doha, but for the first time in Olympic history athletes from both Koreas will be on the same team in one sport: women's hockey. As the host nation South Korea was already assured a place in the 8 team field, but within the flurry of negotiations over North Korea's participation it was agreed and ultimately approved by the IOC and the IIHF that there would be a combined Korean team with the addition of 12 North Korean players to the previously announced 23 member South Korean team. No more than 22 of the 35 Korean women will suit up for each game, of which at least three must come from the North, wearing a blue and white Korean unity jersey and known by the Olympic designation COR (derived from Coree, the French word for Korea). The two nations will still compete separately in other sports. After just a few days training together the unified Korean women's hockey team, with four northerners in the starting lineup, took to the ice for the first time this past Sunday in Incheon in their only pre-Olympic warmup match, losing 3-1 to Sweden, a team they will face again in the Games as they along with Switzerland and Japan are in Group B.
The weather will of course play a role in the outdoor events, this being the Winter Olympics after all, but over the past couple of weeks it has been brutally cold on the peninsula, with daytime high temperatures most days not even close to the freezing mark. The Opening Ceremony will take place Friday NIGHT at 2000 (local time) in an outdoor venue, where even the 3.5 meter wind screens won't help with the air temperature, expected to again dip below the freezing mark. Each of the 35000 spectators will be issued a rain jacket, a blanket and heating pads in an effort to keep them warm, or at least not have them freeze.
Kevin
First, the men's hockey competition will be significantly watered down as the NHL decided back in April of last year not to allow their players to be selected for their respective national teams. The main reason publically cited was a dispute over who would pay to insure the players during the Games, but the NHL wasn't happy that the league and more importantly its sponsors derived no benefit from participating because the IOC's sponsors have exclusivity. Since the major European leagues are still scheduling breaks to allow their players to be selected it may ultimately benefit them more than the North American teams, but handicapping the men's field is a crap shoot. What is certain is that the host nation's squad, bolstered by some North American-born players signed to domestic teams who were made naturalized citizens, is unlikely to progress out of its preliminary group since it also consists of Canada, Switzerland and the Czech Republic. I'll get to the women's tournament in a bit.
The next major issue concerns Russia. After reports surfaced in 2016 of a systematic cover up of Russian doping at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, a conspiracy so elaborate in its execution that it could only have been engineered by the state, the International Olympic Committee left it to individual sports federations as to whether Russian athletes would be excluded from that year's Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. In that case some sporting bodies, led by the IAAF (track and field), opted for a total ban while others demurred so long as the athletes in those sports could prove they were clean. The International Paralympic Committee, on the other hand, did ban Russia from the 2016 Paralympics, a ban which remains in place for this year's Winter Paralympics as well. As doping controls in Russia were still not back up to international standards as of December of last year the IOC decided to exclude the Russian Olympic Committee from PyeongChang but will allow individual Russian athletes who are certified as clean to participate under the banner Olympic Athletes of Russia, with the Olympic flag and anthem to be used. 168 athletes were cleared to take part, but that figure does NOT include Korean-born short-track speed skater Viktor Ahn, who was among a group banned at the last minute because even though they never had a positive result for a PED (performance enhancing drug) their biological passports are suspect because of continued suspicion surrounding Russia's doping lab.
Over the course of 2017 one of the main concerns was whether North Korea's belligerence would pose a threat to the Games as they held tests of their nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities, to the near universal consternation of the international community. Then at the start of this year came a surprising turn of events, initiated by the declaration during North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's New Year's speech that his country would reopen a hotline with the South, dormant for nearly two years, with the aim of negotiating the means by which North Korean athletes would take part in the Winter Olympics. There followed in relatively quick succession two negotiating sessions in Panmunjon which ironed out the details, which would include entry into the South of musicians and other cultural performers as well as a "cheer squad". While the South's president Moon Jae-in was eager to facilitate the exchanges in the hopes that greater inter-Korean cooperation on other matters would follow, including resolving the nuclear issue, his allies in Tokyo and Washington remain skeptical. When Japan's prime minister Shinzo Abe and US vice president Mike Pence attend the Opening Ceremony on Friday they'll be in the same stadium as the leader of North Korea's rubber-stamp parliament, 90 year old Kim Yong-nam, who is #2 in his country's hierarchy and will lead the official DPRK delegation. As if to keep up the rhetoric against the North one of Mr. Pence's guests will be Fred Warmbier, whose son Otto mysteriously fell into a coma a month after he was convicted by a North Korean court in 2016 of stealing a propaganda poster and who died in June 2017 six days after his still-comatose body was repatriated to the US.
The most visible signs of the slight thawing of inter-Korean relations will not only be the joint entry of athletes from both nations during the Opening Ceremony under the name "Korea" behind a unity flag, a scene not witnessed since the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin as well as that year's Asian Games in Doha, but for the first time in Olympic history athletes from both Koreas will be on the same team in one sport: women's hockey. As the host nation South Korea was already assured a place in the 8 team field, but within the flurry of negotiations over North Korea's participation it was agreed and ultimately approved by the IOC and the IIHF that there would be a combined Korean team with the addition of 12 North Korean players to the previously announced 23 member South Korean team. No more than 22 of the 35 Korean women will suit up for each game, of which at least three must come from the North, wearing a blue and white Korean unity jersey and known by the Olympic designation COR (derived from Coree, the French word for Korea). The two nations will still compete separately in other sports. After just a few days training together the unified Korean women's hockey team, with four northerners in the starting lineup, took to the ice for the first time this past Sunday in Incheon in their only pre-Olympic warmup match, losing 3-1 to Sweden, a team they will face again in the Games as they along with Switzerland and Japan are in Group B.
The weather will of course play a role in the outdoor events, this being the Winter Olympics after all, but over the past couple of weeks it has been brutally cold on the peninsula, with daytime high temperatures most days not even close to the freezing mark. The Opening Ceremony will take place Friday NIGHT at 2000 (local time) in an outdoor venue, where even the 3.5 meter wind screens won't help with the air temperature, expected to again dip below the freezing mark. Each of the 35000 spectators will be issued a rain jacket, a blanket and heating pads in an effort to keep them warm, or at least not have them freeze.
Kevin