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The PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympic Games, officially kicked off with an unforgettable Opening Ceremony at the Olympic Plaza.
Peace in Motion had been promised and that’s exactly what was delivered to the spectators in Hoenggye.
People around the world watched in delight as five children from rural Gangwon province embarked on an adventure that incorporated Korean cultural heritage and the beauty of the host nation’s natural landscape.
The Taegeukgi pattern is the core component of the flag of the Republic of Korea. Although everyone was prepared for the symbol to make an appearance at some point in the evening, nobody could have expected the exhilarating role that the Janggo drumming performance would play in its formation.
The four Taegeukgi trigrams represent heaven, earth, fire and water. They also embody the changes of yin and yang.
Republic of Korea’s figure skating superstar Yuna Kim lit the Olympic Cauldron at the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Games on Friday.
For 101 days, the Olympic Flame has travelled to every corner of Korea and tonight the gold medalist had the honour of lighting the Olympic Cauldron.
Kim, who won gold at the Vancouver Games in 2010 and silver in Sochi four years later, performed a short skating routine before receiving the torch and sending flames shooting up to the cauldron. She claimed that she was more nervous performing this routine than in either of her medal-winning performances!
The spectacular sight of 1,218 drones lighting up the sky could only be seen on television, however, as it had been pre-recorded! The organisers also managed to withstand a suspected cyber-attack!
History was made when the women’s ice hockey team combining players from North and South of the demilitarised zone took to the ice on the opening day. An 8-0 defeat to Switzerland, the 2014 bronze medalists, did nothing to freeze the mood.
It did not take long for the hosts to be on their feet in celebration when Lim Hyo-jun secured South Korea’s first gold medal of the Olympics and 22nd in short-track speed-skating since it made its debut in 1992.
The first overall gold of the competition was won by Sweden’s Charlotte Kalla in the women’s 15km skiathlon, an event that requires competitors to change skis and poles at the halfway stage. This was her third gold medal and sixth overall.
She beat the defending champion, Norwegian Marit Bjorgen by 7.8 seconds although the latter had the consolation of becoming the second-most decorated Winter Olympian of all time by securing her 11th medal. Her target will be to overhaul the 13 medals won by compatriot Ole Einar Bjorndalen.
The Dutch kicked off their campaign at the Winter Olympics with a clean sweep in the women’s 3,000 metres speed skating as the relatively unknown Carlijn Achtereekte pipped defending champion Ireen Wust by the narrowest of margins to win gold. Antoinette de Jong, who at 22 is being hailed in the Netherlands as someone destined for greatness, proved that the future of Dutch skating is secure by winning bronze in her first event at her first Olympics.
In the men’s events home hopes were high as Korean athlete Seung-Hoon Lee dominated the early proceedings but was overtaken in the most dramatic race to date.
Racing in pairs with the overall fastest time determining the winner, Ted-Jan Bloemen pushed his skate forward on the line to pip Norway’s Sverre Lunde Pedersen. With the stadium clock showing identical times it was left to the judges to separate the silver and bronze medalists by just two thousandths of a second.
Another country to occupy the entire podium was Norway, which put on a dominant show as they swept the board in the first men’s cross-country skiing race. Simen Hegstad Krueger broke from the pack in the penultimate lap of the men’s 15km + 15km skiathlon and went on to take the gold medal, with team mates Martin Johnsrud Sundby and Hans Christer Holund taking silver and bronze respectively. His victory was remarkable given that he had fallen in the opening sprint and found himself at the back of the entire pack.
In the snow park 17-year old Red Gerard took home the gold in the snowboard slopestyle thanks to a perfectly executed backside triple cork 1440, while 19-year old Perrine Laffont claimed gold for France in the ladies’ moguls. She beat defending champion Justine Dufour-Lapointe by just 0.09 points while Yulia Galysheva became Kazakhstan’s first ever medal winner.
Evgenia Medvedeva set a new world record in the women’s figure skating short programme, with a brilliant skate that helped the Olympic Athletes from Russia (OAR) into second place in the team competition behind Canada. Medvedeva, the reigning world champion who is competing in her first Olympics, was awarded 81.06 points for her performance.
The 18-year-old overcame a number of hurdles to make it to Pyeongchang, including a broken foot that forced her to drop out of the Grand Prix Final last year.
The one stain in Korea has come from Russian speed skater, Semen Elistratov, who dedicated his bronze medal to ‘all guys that have been excluded from these Games in such a hard and unfair way … despite all the cirumstances around Russian sport’. Officially competing for the Olympic Athletes of Russia (and therefore neutral) Elistratov, along with his comrades, is officially banned from making political statements and so his comments will be investigated.
One of the highlights away from the action has been the North Korean ‘cheerleaders’ who have taken audience participation to a new level.
Wearing matching red uniforms they performed perfectly synchronised song and dance routines in the stands for the skating and hockey events. North Korea has sent 230 fans to cheer their handful of competitors.
