2018 Winter Olympics

The design for the Games' medals was unveiled on 21 September 2017. Created by Lee Suk-woo, the design features a pattern of diagonal ridges on both sides, with the Olympic rings on the front, and the obverse showing the 2018 Olympics' emblem, the event name and the discipline. The edge of each medal is marked with extrusions of hangul alphabets, while the ribbons are made from a traditional South Korean textile.[15] Gold medals contained 99 percent of silver and 1 percent of gold, which is a traditional composition for Olympic gold medals. At 586 grams (20.7 oz) they were the heaviest medals in the Olympic history.[16][17]

2018 Winter Olympics torch

The torch relay started on 24 October 2017 in Greece and lasted for 101 days, ending at the start of the Olympics on 9 February 2018. The Olympic torch entered South Korea on 1 November 2017. There were 7,500 torch bearers to represent the combined Korean population of approximately 75 million people. There were also 2,018 support runners to guard the torch and act as messengers.

The torch and its bearers traveled by a diverse means of transportation, including by turtle ship in Hansando Island, sailboat on the Baengmagang River in Buyeo, marine cable car in Yeosu, zip-wire over Bamseom Island, steam train in the Gokseong Train Village, marine rail bike along the east coast in Samcheok, and by yacht in Busan Metropolitan City.

There were also robot torch relays in Jeju and Daejeon.[18]

Olympic venues 2018

Dragon Valley (Alpensia) Ski Resort

Alpensia Resort and wind turbines in Pyeongchang

Most of the outdoor snow events were held in the county of Pyeongchang, while some of the alpine skiing events took place in the neighboring county of Jeongseon. The indoor ice events were held in the nearby city of Gangneung.

The Alpensia Sports Park in Daegwallyeong-myeon, Pyeongchang, was the focus of the 2018 Winter Olympics.[19][20] It was home to the Olympic Stadium,[21] the Olympic Village and most of the outdoor sports venues.

• Alpensia Ski Jumping Centre – ski jumping, Nordic combined, snowboarding (big air)
• Alpensia Biathlon Centre – biathlon
• Alpensia Cross-Country Skiing Centre – cross-country skiing, Nordic combined
• Alpensia Sliding Centre – luge, bobsleigh, skeleton
• Yongpyong Alpine Centre – alpine skiing (slalom, giant slalom)

Additionally, a stand-alone outdoor sports venue was located in Bongpyeong-myeon, Pyeongchang:

• Phoenix Snow Park – freestyle skiing, snowboarding

Another stand-alone outdoor sports venue was located in neighboring Jeongseon county:

• Jeongseon Alpine Centre – alpine skiing (downhill, super-G, combined)

The Gangneung Olympic Park, in the neighborhood of Gyo-dong in Gangneung city, includes four indoor sports venues, all in close proximity to one another.

• Gangneung Hockey Centre – ice hockey (men's competition)
• Gangneung Curling Centre – curling
• Gangneung Oval[21] – long track speed skating
• Gangneung Ice Arena – short track speed skating, figure skating

In addition, a stand-alone indoor sports venue was located in the grounds of Catholic Kwandong University.

• Kwandong Hockey Centre – ice hockey (women's competition)

Ticket prices for the 2018 Winter Olympics were announced in April 2016 and tickets went on sale in October 2016. Event tickets ranged in price from ₩20,000 South Korean won (approx. US$17) to ₩900,000 (~US$787) while tickets for the opening and closing ceremonies ranged from ₩220,000 (~US$192) to ₩1.5 million (~US$1311). The exact prices were determined through market research; around 50% of the tickets were expected to cost about ₩80,000 (~US$70) or less, and tickets in sports that are relatively unknown in the region, such as biathlon and luge, were made cheaper in order to encourage attendance. By contrast, figure skating and the men's ice hockey gold-medal game carried the most expensive tickets of the Games.[22]

As of 11 October 2017, domestic ticket sales for the Games were reported to be slow. Of the 750,000 seats allocated to South Koreans, only 20.7% had been sold. International sales were more favorable, with 59.7% of the 320,000 allocated tickets sold.[23][24] However, as of 31 January 2018, 77% of all tickets had been sold.[25]

Parade of Nations at 2018 Olympic opening ceremony

The opening ceremony of the 2018 Winter Olympics was held at the Pyeongchang Olympic Stadium on 9 February 2018. The US$100 million facility was only intended to be used for the opening and closing ceremonies of these Olympics and the subsequent Paralympics; it was demolished following their conclusion.[26][27][28]

The 2018 Winter Olympics featured 102 events over 15 disciplines in 7 sports,[29] making it the first Winter Olympics to surpass 100 medal events. Six new events in existing sports were introduced to the Winter Olympic program in Pyeongchang: men's and ladies' big air snowboarding, mixed doubles curling, men's and ladies' mass start speed skating, and mixed team alpine skiing.[29][30]

Numbers in parentheses indicate the number of medal events contested in each separate discipline.

A record total of 93[note 1] teams qualified at least one athlete to compete in the Games. The number of athletes who qualified per country is listed in the table below (number of athletes shown in parentheses). Six nations made their Winter Olympics debuts: Ecuador, Eritrea, Kosovo, Malaysia, Nigeria and Singapore.[31] Athletes from three further countries – the Cayman Islands, Dominica, and Peru – qualified to compete, but all three National Olympic Committees returned the quota spots back to the International Ski Federation (FIS).[32]

Under a historic agreement facilitated by the IOC, qualified athletes from North Korea were allowed to cross the Korean Demilitarized Zone into South Korea to compete in the Games.[33][34][35] The two nations marched together under the Korean Unification Flag during the opening ceremony.[36][37] A unified Korean team, consisting of 12 players from North Korea and 23 from South Korea, competed in the women's ice hockey tournament under a special IOC country code designation (COR) following talks in Panmunjom on 17 January 2018.[36] The two nations also participated separately: the South Korea team competed in every sport, while the North Korea team competed in alpine skiing, cross-country skiing, figure skating, and short track speed skating.[38]

On 5 December 2017, the IOC announced that the Russian Olympic Committee had been suspended due to the Russian doping scandal and the investigation into the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Individual Russian athletes, who qualified and could demonstrate they had complied with the IOC's doping regulations, were given the option to compete at the 2018 Games as "Olympic Athletes from Russia" (OAR) under the Olympic flag and with the Olympic anthem played at any ceremony.[39]

  The participating countries at the 2018 Winter Olympics

  Debuting countries at the Winter Olympics

  Yellow circle is host city (Pyeongchang)

Country by team size

The IOC has allowed NBC to influence the Olympic event scheduling to maximize U.S. television ratings when possible, due to the substantial fees paid by NBC for rights to the Olympics (which have been extended through 2032 with a nearly $8 billion agreement), the company being one of IOC's major sources of revenue.[46][47] As figure skating is one of the most popular Winter Olympic sports among U.S. viewers, the figure skating events were scheduled with morning start times to accommodate primetime broadcasts in the Americas. This scheduling practice affected the events themselves, including skaters having to adjust to the modified schedule, as well as attendance levels at the sessions.[48]

Conversely, and somewhat controversially, eight of the eleven biathlon events were scheduled at night, making it necessary for competitors to ski and shoot under floodlights, with colder temperatures and blustery winds.[49]

All dates are KST (UTC+9)

February		8th Thu	9th Fri	10th Sat	11th Sun	12th Mon	13th Tue	14th Wed	15th Thu	16th Fri	17th Sat	18th Sun	19th Mon	20th Tue	21st Wed	22nd Thu	23rd Fri	24th Sat	25th Sun	Events
Ceremonies			OC																CC	—
Alpine skiing							1		2	2	1	1			1	2		1		11
Biathlon				1	1	2			2		1	1		1		1	1			11
Bobsleigh												●	1	●	1			●	1	3
Cross-country skiing				1	1		2		1	1	1	1			2			1	1	12
Curling		●	●	●	●	●	1	●	●	●	●	●	●	●	●	●	●	1	1	3
Figure skating			●		●	1		●	1	●	1		●	1	●		1		EG	5
Freestyle skiing			●		1	1			●	1	1	2	●	1	1	1	1			10
Ice hockey				●	●	●	●	●	●	●	●	●	●	●	●	1	●	●	1	2
Luge				●	1	●	1	1	1											4
Nordic combined								1						1		1				3
Short track speed skating				1			1				2			1		3				8
Skeleton									●	1	1									2
Ski jumping		●		1		1				●	1		1							4
Snowboarding				●	1	1	1	1	1	1			●		●	1		3		10
Speed skating				1	1	1	1	1	1	1		1	1		2		1	2		14
Daily medal events		0	0	5	6	7	8	4	9	7	9	6	3	5	7	10	4	8	4	102
Cumulative total		0	0	5	11	18	26	30	39	46	55	61	64	69	76	86	90	98	102
February		8th Thu	9th Fri	10th Sat	11th Sun	12th Mon	13th Tue	14th Wed	15th Thu	16th Fri	17th Sat	18th Sun	19th Mon	20th Tue	21st Wed	22nd Thu	23rd Fri	24th Sat	25th Sun	Total events

  *   Host nation (South Korea[50])

Rank	NOC	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total
1	Norway	14	14	11	39
2	Germany	14	10	7	31
3	Canada	11	8	10	29
4	United States	9	8	6	23
5	Netherlands	8	6	6	20
6	Sweden	7	6	1	14
7	South Korea*	5	8	4	17
8	Switzerland	5	6	4	15
9	France	5	4	6	15
10	Austria	5	3	6	14
11–30	Remaining	20	29	41	90
Totals (30 entries)		103	102	102	307

Three podium sweeps were recorded during the Games.

Date	Sport	Event	NOC	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Ref
10 February	Speed skating	Women's 3000 metres	Netherlands	Carlijn Achtereekte	Ireen Wüst	Antoinette de Jong	[51]
11 February	Cross-country skiing	Men's 30 km skiathlon	Norway	Simen Hegstad Krüger	Martin Johnsrud Sundby	Hans Christer Holund	[52]
20 February	Nordic combined	Individual large hill/10 km	Germany	Johannes Rydzek	Fabian Rießle	Eric Frenzel	[53]

• Noriaki Kasai of Japan became the first athlete in history to participate in eight Winter Olympics when he took part in the ski jumping qualification the day before the opening of the Games.[54] The previous record of seven Winter Olympics was held by Russian luger Albert Demchenko.
• Japanese athlete Yuzuru Hanyu became the fourth male figure skater (after Gillis Grafström, Karl Schäfer, and Dick Button) to win two consecutive Olympic gold medals.
• American Nathan Chen became the first figure skater to land five quadruple jumps in one program.[55]
• German figure skaters Aliona Savchenko and Bruno Massot set a new ISU best free skating score of 159.31 in pair skating.[56]
• Canadian figure skaters Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir became the most decorated figure skaters in Olympic history with a total of 5 medals.
• Canadian figure skaters Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir set a new ISU best short dance score of 83.67[57] and a new ISU best combined total score of 206.07[58] in ice dance. French ice dancers Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron set a new ISU best free dance score of 123.35.[59]
• Russian figure skater Alina Zagitova set a new ISU best short program score of 82.92 in Ladies' single skating.[60]
• Dutch speed skater Sven Kramer won gold in the men's 5000 m event, becoming the only male speed skater to win the same Olympic event three times. He was also the first man to win a total of eight Olympic medals in speed skating.[61]
• Dutch speed skater Ireen Wüst won an individual gold medal for the fourth Olympics in a row, the first time this had been achieved by a Winter Olympian. She also became the first speed skater (male or female) to win ten Winter Olympic medals and the first female Winter Olympian to win nine individual medals.[62]
• Chinese short track speed skater Wu Dajing beat the men's 500 m world record twice en route to winning a gold medal, becoming only the second person in history to skate the discipline in under 40 seconds (after American J. R. Celski), and the first to achieve this at "sea level".[63]
• Dutch athlete Jorien ter Mors became the first female athlete to win Olympic medals in two different sports at a single Winter Games;[64] she won a speed skating gold medal in the 1000 m and she was also part of the Dutch short track team that won bronze in the 3000 m relay.
• Ester Ledecká of the Czech Republic won gold in the super-G skiing event and another gold in the snowboarding parallel giant slalom, making her the first female athlete to win Olympic gold medals in two different sports at a single Winter Games.[65]
• Norwegian cross-country skier Marit Bjørgen won bronze in the women's team sprint and gold in the 30 km classical event, bringing her total Olympic medal haul to fifteen, the most won by any athlete (male or female) in Winter Olympics history.[66] The record was previously held by fellow Norwegian athlete Ole Einar Bjørndalen who has thirteen Olympic medals.
• Germany and Canada tied for gold in the two-man bobsleigh event, only the second time in history that two countries had tied for a gold medal in this particular event, the first time being in the 1998 Winter Olympics twenty years earlier.[67]
• Norway won a total of 39 medals, setting a new record for the highest number of medals won at a single Winter Olympics. Their 39th medal was the last gold medal won by cross-country skier Marit Bjørgen in the 30 km classical event. The record was previously held by the USA who won 37 medals in Vancouver 2010.[68]

The closing ceremony of the 2018 Winter Olympics was held at the Pyeongchang Olympic Stadium on 25 February 2018. IOC president Thomas Bach declared the Games closed, and the cauldron was extinguished. The Olympic flag was handed to Beijing, the next host city of the Winter Olympics.

Due to the state of relations between North and South Korea, concerns were raised over the security of the 2018 Winter Olympics, especially in the wake of tensions over North Korean missile and nuclear tests. On 20 September 2017, South Korean president Moon Jae-in stated that the country would ensure the security of the Games.[99] The next day, Laura Flessel-Colovic, the French Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports, stated that France would pull out of the Games if the safety of its delegation could not be guaranteed.[100]

Protesters at Gwanghwamun Plaza, criticizing the event's pro-North Korean measures

The next day, Austria and Germany raised similar concerns and also threatened to skip the Games. France later reaffirmed its participation.[101] In early December 2017, the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, told Fox News that it was an "open question" whether the United States was going to participate in the Games, citing security concerns in the region.[102] However, days later the White House Press Secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, stated that the United States would participate.[103]

In his New Year's address on 1 January 2018, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un proposed talks in Seoul over the country's participation in the Games, which would be the first high-level talks between the North and South in over two years. Because of the talks, held on 9 January, North Korea agreed to field athletes in Pyeongchang.[104][105] On 17 January 2018, it was announced that North and South Korea had agreed to field a unified Korean women's ice hockey team at the Games, and to enter together under a Korean Unification Flag during the opening ceremony.[36][106]

These moves were met with opposition in South Korea, including protests and online petitions; critics argued that the government was attempting to use the Olympics to spread pro-North Korean sentiment, and that the unified ice hockey team would fail.[107] A rap video entitled "The Regret for Pyeongchang" (평창유감), which echoed this criticism and called the event the "Pyongyang Olympics", went viral in the country.[108] Japan's foreign affairs minister Tarō Kōno warned South Korea to be wary of North Korea's "charm offensive", and not to ease its pressure on the country.[36][109]

The South Korean President, Moon Jae-in, at the start of the Olympics shook hands with Kim Yo-jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and a prominent figure of the regime. This marked the first time since the Korean War that a member of the ruling Kim dynasty had visited South Korea.[110][111] In contrast, U.S. vice president Mike Pence met with Fred Warmbier (father of Otto Warmbier, who had died after being released from captivity in North Korea) and a group of North Korean defectors in Pyeongchang.[112] American officials said that North Korea cancelled a meeting with Pence at the last minute.[113]

At the closing ceremony, North Korea sent general Kim Yong-chol as its delegate. His presence was met with hostility from South Korean conservatives, as there were allegations that he had a role in the ROKS Cheonan sinking and other past attacks. The Ministry of Unification stated that "there is a limitation in pinpointing who was responsible for the incident." Although he is subject to sanctions, they did not affect his ability to visit the country for the Games.[114][115]

Russia's participation in the 2018 Winter Olympics was affected by the aftermath of its state-sponsored doping program. As a result, the IOC suspended the Russian Olympic Committee in December 2017, although Russian athletes whitelisted by the IOC were allowed to compete neutrally under the OAR (Olympic Athletes from Russia) designation.[116] The official sanctions imposed by the IOC included: the exclusion of Russian government officials from the Games; the use of the Olympic flag and Olympic Anthem in place of the Russian flag and anthem; and the submission of a replacement logo for the OAR uniforms.[117]

By early January 2018, the IOC had banned 43 Russian athletes from competing in the 2018 Winter Olympics and all future Olympic Games (as part of the Oswald Commission). Of those athletes, 42 appealed against their bans to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) and 28 of the appeals were successful, but eleven of the athletes had their sanctions upheld due to the weight of evidence against them. The IOC found it important to note that CAS Secretary General "insisted that the CAS decision does not mean that these 28 athletes are innocent" and that they would consider an appeal against the court's decision. Hearings for the remaining three athletes were postponed.[118]

The eventual number of neutral Russian athletes that participated at the 2018 Games was 168. These were selected from an original pool of 500 athletes that was put forward for consideration and, in order to receive an invitation to the Games, they were obliged to meet a number of pre-games conditions. Two athletes, who met the conditions and were cleared by the IOC, subsequently failed drug tests during the Games.

Russian president Vladimir Putin and other officials had signalled in the past that it would be a humiliation if Russian athletes were not allowed to compete under the Russian flag.[119] However, there were never actually any official plans to boycott the 2018 Games[116] and in late 2017 the Russian government agreed to allow their athletes to compete at the Games as individuals under a neutral designation.[120][121] Despite this public show of co-operation, there were numerous misgivings voiced by leading Russian politicians, including a statement from Putin himself saying that he believed the United States had used its influence within the IOC to "orchestrate the doping scandal".[122] 86% of the Russian population opposed participation at the Olympics under a neutral flag,[123] and many Russian fans attended the Games wearing the Russian colors and chanting "Russia!" in unison, in an act of defiance against the ban.[124]

The IOC's decision was heavily criticized by Jack Robertson, primary investigator of the Russian doping program on behalf of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), in whose opinion the judgement was commercially and politically motivated. He argued that not only was doping rife among Russian athletes but that there was no sign of it being eradicated.[125] The CAS decision to overturn the life bans of 28 Russian athletes and restore their medals was also fiercely criticized, by Olympic officials, IOC president Thomas Bach and whistleblower Grigory Rodchenkov's lawyer.[126]