2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics
PyeongChang, South Korea
In our third Olympics, Keli and I headed to South Korea. This is our first time in an Asian country which made us a bit nervous. In Russia we knew there would be a language barrier but with some help from Misha Golynskiy we at least had some knowledge of what to say (hello, thank you, numbers, etc.). Rio the language was confusing because I wanted to use my Spanish but obviously that doesn’t translate at all into Portuguese, but at least we could read the words. In Korea, the worry was not only the language but unless something was in English, we would be completely lost with the countries character system. Luckily as with most first world countries (combining the efforts of the Olympic Games), almost everything had an English translation. The second and maybe more obvious concern…North Korea. In Sochi it was ISIS and the possible bombings, in Rio it was Zika and muggings, but Korea being so close to the border of the neighboring communist country along with the tensions between the US, it was a bit concerning. As always, Keli and I planned to be as attentive as possible and didn’t put ourselves in any compromising situations which included going to the DMZ. Why chance it, right?
So the games being in PyeongChang were a huge challenge. The city is on the east coast and of course lodging was once again a big issue. There were no affordable hotels, and when we looked at AirBnB months ago, there was almost nothing available. Luckily all reports, news articles, and even the PyeongChang website stated that we shouldn’t worry. A fast and reliable bullet train was being built for the games and it would only take between 1:15 to 1:45 to get from Seoul to PyeongChang or Gangneung where the main Olympic Park was located. Well, that was partially accurate. Yes a train was built, yes it was quick and efficient, but did it work for people in Seoul or any surrounding areas outside of the east coast…not really. Unbeknownst to us (and us I mean every foreigner who bought the Olympic Games train pass), we had to book seats on every trip to and from the parks/clusters. And in order to do this, we had to compete with every Korean who wanted to use the trains as well. As you can imagine that was a complete shit show. When I went to book the trains, every seat was taken for the times we wanted to go to the events. It didn’t help that the Korean national holiday was smack dab in the middle of the Olympics and the booking availability was opened to locals before any of us. So our trains were a mix of haphazard times that often got us to the events minutes before they started and then we either needed to wait hours afterward (meaning, an event ended at 11pm and we didn’t get onto a train until 1:30am) or we had to leave early. It really sucked because we planned this trip a year in advance and could not anticipate what a mess the transportation would be. Let’s put it this way, for the men’s aerials event we traveled took a 20 minute subway from the hotel to the Seoul station. Then 1.5 hours on a train. Took a 45 minute bus from the train to the park. Saw the first round of jumps (only 12 out of 24) for 30 minutes. Then had to miss the finals because we needed to race out of the park (20 minutes), 45 minute bus, just made it onto the train for the 1.5 hour trek to Seoul, and finally on the subway. 5.5 hours of travel for 30 minutes, and that was a good scenario. We bought bronze medal hockey tickets and couldn’t go! The game was scheduled for 9:30, was going to be over at midnight, and the only train back to Seoul was at 11:24pm!!!! What the hell? Anyway, we made the best of it, met a lot of cool people, and learned a valuable lesson on where to book hotels in the future.
Ski Jumping 2/16
Our first event took place on February 16th and it was the men’s qualifying ski jump. In 2014 we saw the Nordic combined and were fascinated by the jumping that day, it peaked our interest in what a true ski jumper could do on the big hill. We were not disappointed. We arrived at the Alpensia Snow Park and trekked up the mountain the jumping arena. The place was amazing. In Sochi the jumping structure kind of looked out of place, in the middle of nowhere. But these structures were built into an amazing alcove surrounded by big rocky cliffs, giving it a very European atmosphere. The temperature was freezing cold, I think with wind chill the announcers stated it was close to -10C. And even though we were in the standing section with a ton of people packed in next to each other, Keli and I just could not get our bodies let alone our hands warm. We even had heat packs in our gloves but when you are trying to take pictures, or holding up the flag to show support, our fingers were going numb. The jumping took a while to complete because of the wind (the athletes often waited for a few extra minutes until it was safe), but it was well worth it. To see people flying 130-145 meters is insane. You can really see how they direct their bodies in the air and even slight hand movement can impact the jump by several meters. At the end of the night, the top qualifiers were Robert Johansson from Norway, Johann Andre Forfang from Norway and Ryoyu Kobayashi from Japan (he flew 143m!) while the top American in the group Kevin Bicker jumped 122m and was in 35th place while Michael Glasder sat in 38th. After the jumping competition was complete, Keli and I had a ton of time to kill because of the extra late train so we stayed around the area to take pictures, had hot chocolate to warm our insides, and then headed to the relief area to warm up before walking back to the bus. I will say this was our most difficult night of the entire trip because our train was at 1:30am, we didn’t get to go all the way back to Seoul (not sure who planned this out but the late trains only went as far as Changyeongyi which is 15 miles outside of the city) and therefore needed to take a 45 minute taxi to the hotel which cost us 50,000 won (approx. $50). By the time we got in bed and finally relaxed enough to go to sleep it was 4am and we needed to get up at 6am for the next train to see the women’s super G. Seriously, I’m not exaggerating when I say the train situation sucked.
Women’s Super G 2/17
When Keli and I bought these tickets we were really excited. Not only was Lindsay Vonn healthy and ready to medal, but arguably the best skier in the world Mikaela Shiffrin of the US was competing as well. With two of the top female skiers in the world, we were sure the American flag would be flying high that day. Well…things change. Because of the super high winds the past few days the ski events were being delayed or pushed back. This happened to the downhill event which essentially forced all the women’s ski events to be nearly back to back. Because of this, Mikaela withdrew from the competition. I think it was a combination of too many events in a row (she was scheduled to compete in all 4) and she was not feeling 100%. Then we got bad news mainly pertaining to us, the Super G was pushed back from 11am to 12pm. Normally that wouldn’t be a big deal…but back to the train situation. Our train back was schedule for 2:30 which was supposed to give us a full hour after the race. But now that the start time was pushed back, the skiers would be going until 2:30 which meant that we had to leave before all the competitors came down the hill. So even though it was great to watch Vonn (she had a great race until the 3rd to last turn where she went wide and essentially lost the gold) we didn’t get to see about 10 racers. And of course, the final skier of the day provided the most exciting run of the event. Ester Ledecka of the Czech Republic, a professional snowboarder who was favored to win gold in the snowboard slalom, came flying down the hill and took the gold by 1 hundredth of a second. She later went on to win the snowboard race as well to become the first women and third person of all time to win two different disciplines at the winter Olympics. That would have been cool to see, huh???? Instead we were on a bus back to the train station. Austria’s Anna Veith got silver while Tina Weirather of Lithuania got the bronze. Vonn came in a disappointing 7th losing by .38 of a second. I will say the thing we learned about the Super G, it’s not very fun to watch…at least on this course. We could only see the last jump before the competitors crossed the finish line. Perhaps if we were in the stands we could see the rest of the course but from our perspective we essentially watched the jumbo tron for 90 seconds and then turned to see the skier flying through the air before crossing the finish line. Don’t get me wrong, it was a good experience in person, but we don’t need to go to this event again in the future.
Men’s Aerial Ski Jumping- 2/18
After the Super G, Keli and I finally had some time to relax. With only 2 hours of sleep the night before and a long day of train rides for alpine skiing on the 17th we finally had time to enjoy the free happy hour at the hotel (I really got after the Jameson whiskey) and slept in a bit. Even with the room being nearly 24 degrees Celsius it wasn’t hard to just pass out. But the morning of the aerials we had a lot of time to kill so the two of us headed to the Trickeye Museum in the college town of Hangik. If you have time to get to this area, the museum is well worth it. 3D wall and floor art that place you into the experience (riding sharks, hanging from the ceiling, interacting with dragons) was a blast. The time flew by and we were required to head back to the hotel and make our way to the train station for our event.
The jumping area was in another part of the mountain cluster called Phoenix Snow Park. Unlike the Jeongeon area where it looked like the South Koreans bulldozed ancient forests and put in a few slopes in the middle of nowhere, the Phoenix Park is a well-established ski town. But this park was a 45 minute bus ride from the train station, and after 20 minutes of trekking up the mountain we finally got to the standing zone with the other 1000 people. I complain because the stands were not for sale when we got tickets and they were nearly empty while the standing zone was so packed we couldn’t move an inch. This was a medal event an obviously a year ago when we got the tickets we were excited to hopefully see a US participant come home with gold. Well, unfortunately not only did the sole American blow it on his first jump but with the running theme of being screwed Kel and I had to miss the entire second round (for the medals) to rush back to the train station. Again, I hate to be so negative but as I type this out I am realizing how much we missed while in Korea. Gold went to China’s Jia Zongyang, Silver to Canada’s Olivier Rochon, and Bronze to Bulgaria’s Stanislau Hladchenko. American Jonathon Ellis the gold medal favorite came in 8th overall. But before I move on, I do want to mention how cool the jumps we did see were. Just looking at the names of the jumps “back full-full-double-full” gives me goose bumps. The idea of being 50-70 feet in the air, doing a triple back flip while conducting spins (sometimes doubles) before smashing into the ground was outrageous. Seeing it on TV is cool, in person it is simply amazing.
Exploring the Palaces- 2/19
I won’t get into this too much, but the 19th was an open day so we took full advantage of sleeping in, exploring the main Seoul Palace of Gyeongbokgung, venturing into Bukchon Hanok Village to see the traditional village, and eating at a local soup and dumpling restaurant. It was a great way to explore the city.
Short Track Speed Skating- 2/20
Today was likely the most exciting day of the Olympics. Short track is probably considered the South Korean national sport and we were going to see a few really cool races, most notably the women’s 3000 meter relay. This was one of the very few days where the trains kind of worked in our favor. Although it would have been nice to arrive in Gangneung 5-6 hours early so we could explore the city, maybe make it to the coast, and then fully venture around the Olympic park, but instead we had to settle for about 2 hours of leeway time. That allowed us to walk from the train station to the park, quickly look at the Tokyo 2020 house, venture inside the Korea house, wait in line for the special Coke bottle (which we didn’t get, this was the first time the bottles were a lottery. You had to hope to get it, and most people only got a regular small can of coke. We at least won a special PyeongChang stuffed polar bear but that was not why we got into the line), then headed over to the ice arena.
The first event of the night was the women’s 1000 meters. With 8 heats, we were in store for a very exciting night. Of course the South Korean women dominated. The first two heats featured a home town favorite and both made it to the next round. The fourth heat Keli and I got to wave our flag (not that we needed it, we were wearing our USA Tipsy Elves Onesie) for Jessica Kooreman. The race was hard fought but we came in 3rd after Italian Arianna Fontana and Canadian Valerie Maltais. The woman we really wanted to cheer for came up in heat 7, that is Lana Gehring. To be honest I only remember briefly seeing her while watching the Olympic trials, but on the way back from the men’s aerials we sat behind her parents on the bus ride back to the train station. They were so friendly and nice that we could only assume Lana was the same, so we screamed our heads off for her. Unfortunately she was in the round of death with Korean Kim Alang and Canadian Marianne St. Gelais who were both favored to go to the finals. Therefore Lana had to push harder and take more risks in the event, eventually being penalized from the race and not moving on.
The second event of the night was the Men’s 500m. Once again we didn’t have any US superstars in the running with world record holder J.R. Celski not making the team in this event, but Silver medalist in the 1500 John Henry Krueger was competing so we had some hope. Once again the Americans had a really tough time. Aaron Tran was penalized in heat one, Thomas Insuk Hong was in his own heat of death losing by 2 full seconds to Korean Hwang Daeheon and Japans Keita Watanabe, and finally JR was beaten by a second by Hungarian Shaolin Sandor Liu and Chinese Han Tianyu. But the speed and pace of the 500 was really exciting. We saw a lot of falls, people really pushing to get in position, and even North Korean Jong Kwang Bom causing havoc on the ice by falling in the first lap and then falling again in the second try while attempting to swat at another competitors skates as he fell again. He should not have been on the ice…
The final event of the night as I mentioned before was the highlight, the 3000 ladies medal relay. They had two races, an A and B, which was a bit curious. I wasn’t sure the point of it until the B relay came in real handy later that night. In the B race the Netherlands took the win with a solid start and great hand offs. Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal…they got fifth overall, and were probably happy with that. But in the A relay all hell broke loose. In the finals it was Korea, Italy, China and Canada. Korea was the favorite of course but China and Canada had really strong teams as well. About ¾’s of the way through on an exchange the South Korean women pushed off but the athlete in back fell causing the Canadians to go completely off track taking out the Italians. Later in the race the Chinese also faltered but we were sure that because the Korean’s caused all of the chaos in the first place they would be penalized. When the race ended and after about 5 minutes of deliberations took place, the judges awarded the gold to Korea, Silver to Italy and Bronze to the Netherlands! We were in shock. Understanding that the place would have gone ape shit if the Koreans were DQ’ed is one thing, but that foursome clearly impacted the entire race. I later read that the judges decided that the Korean fall was a mistake and thus didn’t impact the race overall. That makes no sense to me because every fall is a mistake but the competitors are still penalized. The judges also stated the Chinese were penalized for impacting the race which made sense, but the Canadians were DQ’ed for switching racers within the last two laps. Thus the Italians who fell moved to second and the Dutch who didn’t race at all got third. The response from short track experts, “that’s short track”. What a stupid way of thinking. The Canadians got screwed because the judges were afraid of penalizing the Koreans at home. Anyway, Keli and I saw the results and then jetted out of the stadium hitting up the Olympic store before heading to the train station.
Three interesting things about the night. First, the North Korean cheerleaders. It was amazing to watch these women cheering in unison like they were robots. A lead cheerleader chose the chants and the others followed suit. If the lead cheerleader took off her jacket, they all took off their jacket. The whole thing was a bit unsettling. The second, our onesies were a hit. When one person wanted to take a picture with us, everyone wanted to take a picture with us. It felt like we were celebrities for about 30 minutes. The third and worst thing that happened, with no food in site at the train station we headed across the street to the local food vendors. We got some really tasty fried chicken and called it a night. The next day on our “trip” to Busan, we realized we got food poisoning. A horrible 5 hour round trip highlighted by 30 minutes in the Busan train station really ruined our day off. Live and learn, no more street chicken.
Men's Ski Half Pipe- 2/22
This was another day where we had a bit of time to plan out the trip and see some things that were on our bucket list for the vacation. We got into PyeongChang about 3 hours early. The idea was to take the bus to the PyeongChang olympic park (interestingly enough, the only thing there were the medals ceremony and the olympic stadium...no events take place here) to see the olympic torch before taking a taxi over to the ski park. We got to the area nice and early, about 9am, to find out the park was not open until 10am. Can we get a break??? So we waited around the area in the freezing cold waiting for the security team to allow us in. As soon as we could Kel and I booked through the security line and headed directly to the torch. It was fairly unexciting because it is attached to the olympic stadium, that again, holds no events, so the torch is kind of in the middle of no where. Sochi had it in the middle of the park, Rio brought the flame to the village area, but this was poor planning. Anyway, we took some pics, hit up the olympic store for me to get a few pins, and then took the taxi 45 minutes to Phoenix Snow park.
At least today we got to the venue nice and early. That allowed us to walk to the stands (yes, I said stands! This was the first outside event where we didn't have to stand in a corral). Our seats were great and gave a perfect view of the half pipe. Not only did we get to take amazing pictures, we also had the ability to watch the event in full and kind of see the medal ceremony. I say kind of because they athletes were provided their medals and stuffed animal behind this huge building that likely housed commentators and camera men. But I'm not going to complain. The US men rocked today and took Gold and Silver with David Wise and Alex Ferreira while 16 year old Kiwi Nico Porteous came in a surprising third (he did so well on his second run, he didn't even try on his third. Basically he just skied down the pipe). It's hard to fathom doing any of these tricks the athletes were hitting. 1080's with double flips, landing backward, hitting 20 foot switch jumps...insane.
The one thing we wanted to do after the even since we had a lot of time until our train was have some food, relax in the nice warm shelter, and converse with other spectators. Well, couldn't do that because 45 minutes after the last run we were all ushered out of the park for the next event. It was fine though, this allowed us to get to the train station and watch some of the women's US vs Canada gold medal game.
Rest of the trip-2/23-2/25
I list this as the rest of the trip instead of men’s bronze medal hockey on the 24th because we once again got screwed with the transportation. When we bought the tickets I couldn’t have been more excited. I thought Canada and Russia would likely be in the gold medal game with the outside chance the US would play for bronze. Our NHL players are pretty good and if they have some time together the team would be strong. Two weeks after we bought the $1200 tickets, MF’ing Gary Bettman said the NHL would not allow their players to represent their countries in the Olympics. So right off the bat my excitement went from a 100 to 50. Then when we lost the two of the 3 games in the qualifying rounds I was down to 25. When the US lost in the quarters I was down to 15. But I was completely fed up at the fact there was no easy way for us to go to the game. It started at 9:30pm and would end at midnight. The train to the game would get us there 30 minutes prior (that was the best seats we could find) and the train back was at 11:24…so we wouldn’t even be able to see the full game, maybe just until the beginning of the 2nd period. Olympic organizers finally added a later train but it was at 1:24am and would only get us to Cheongnyangni Station, about 45 minutes from our hotel, which would mean that we would get to bed around 4am to get up at 5:45am for our trip to the airport. Knowing that we couldn’t go to the game, risking not being able to make our flight back to the states, we decided to sell the tickets. I tried stubhub, craigslist, even sat in the Seoul train station for 4 hours with a sign on my backpack to no avail. We finally met some Canadians who were family members of an athlete and they took the tickets to the Canadian Olympic house where they were able to sell the pair for $100 ($75 US). That was an expensive lesson to learn. From now on, if the Olympic tickets are not paired up with some sort of security lanyard, we will just scalp them at the events. I would rather possibly save some money at the event and know for sure who I am seeing versus this type of mishap in the future.
Anyway we spent the rest of the trip exploring the city, going to the rest of the palaces, having some amazing Korean BBQ, and then finally heading home. It was so nice to get off the plane in San Diego where the weather was warm and there was some humidity in the air. I felt like I could finally breathe again. Anyway, next stop, Japan 2020.
