It only seems like yesterday we were getting excited about the $50 billion Sochi Winter Olympics in Russia, when the biggest-ever spend on ski resort infrastructure was splashed out by the government and its oligarch friends and Britain won only our second-ever Olympic snowsports medal – and the first one we got to keep!
Now it’s only a year until the Winter Olympics are back, for their 23rd staging, this time further east still in South Korea, and hopes are high for more British medals after snowboarder Jenny Jones’s bronze in the Sochi Slopestyle competition.
The Sochi Paralympics of course saw huge success for British skiers, with a haul of six medals including four for Jade Etherington with her guide Caroline Powell (making them the most successful British women in the history of the Winter Paralympics) and the first-ever British gold won by Kelly Gallagher. The Pyeongchang Winter Paralympics, their 12th staging, begins 12 days after the Olympics Closing Ceremony.
South Korea last hosted an Olympics, the Summer Games, three decades ago at Seoul in 1988. They’re the first country in Asia to hold the Winter Games other than Japan, which has staged it twice before. However, the Winter and Summer Games will be staying in Asia for a while with Tokyo hosting the next Summer Games in 2020 followed by China for the 2022 Winter Olympics.
The South Korean Winter Olympics
The South Koreans have not splashed the cash like the Russians, but as a country known for its high standard of living and high-quality infrastructure, top-notch facilities should be the order of the day.
Indeed, the various 2018 Olympic venues are now all but complete, and the world’s top athletes have already been competing in test events last winter and will do again this.
The construction of the venues has not been without controversy, however. A key issue was that although there are a dozen or so ski resorts in South Korea, there was no existing ski run with a big enough vertical to host the blue ribbon Men’s Olympic Downhill. Various solutions were suggested including building a bit more mountain on top of the existing biggest vertical so that it was big enough, but in the end a whole new ski area was created, reportedly involving the removal of ancient woodland, which was not a popular move with environmental groups.
15 winter-sports disciplines will be included in the Pyeongchang Games, divided into seven Olympic sports and spread over 102 separate events – the first time the Winter Games has hosted more than 100.
Seven of the 15 sports take place on skis or snowboard – downhill there’s alpine, freestyle, ski jumping and snowboarding, and there’s also cross-country, Nordic combined and biathlon.
The games will see four new events, including two of interest to skiers and boarders: snowboarding big air and the alpine skiing team event. Parallel slalom in snowboarding has been dropped in favour of big air.
Competitions in the 2018 Winter Paralympics will be held in six Winter Paralympic sports, with 80 medal events in total. Snowboarding will be expanded into a separate discipline for the Pyeongchang Games, with 10 medal events (in 2014, two medal events in snowboarding were held within the alpine skiing programme).
Brits To Watch Out For
There’s still a year to go, but here are a dozen of the biggest talents on the British team:
Dave Ryding (Alpine Slalom): five top 15 World Cup Slalom finishes (at the time of writing).
Katie Ormerod (Park & Pipe Snowboard): World Cup Big Air gold in Moscow plus four other World Cup podiums this season, X Games invite.
James ‘Woodsy’ Woods (Park & Pipe Ski): gold in Cardrona Games Slopestyle in the summer, performed well in Dew Tour, got X Games invite.
Jamie Nicholls (Park & Pipe Snowboard): gold in World Cup Slopestyle last season in Czech Republic.
Katie Summerhayes (Park & Pipe Ski): 6th in World Cup Slopestyle last season at 2018 Olympic venue Bokwang.
Kelly Gallagher (Paralympic Alpine Skiing): gold medal holder from 2014 Sochi Olympics.
Isabel Atkin (Park & Pipe Ski): 4th in Dew Tour this season.
Billy Morgan (Park & Pipe Snowboard): World Cup bronze in Moscow, X Games invite.
Lloyd Wallace (Aerials): 7th last season in Deer Valley World Cup.
Andrew Musgrave (Nordic): 10th in Val Mustair World Cup this season.
Andrew Young (Nordic): 11th in Val Mustair World Cup this season.
Emily Sarsfield (Ski Cross): 15th in Innichen World Cup this season.
The Venues
All of the Olympic venues are located within 30 minutes of the central Alpensia Sports Park, the ‘hub’ of the Games.
The Bokwang snow park may be the venue where Brits get the most medals as this is where freestyle skiing and snowboarding events – 20 competitions in total – take place. These include the events where we’ve won the Sochi medal, where our athletes have podiumed and even won gold this season in World Cup competitions, and where we’re putting most of the public money for elite snowsports athletes as a result of that success.
Freestyle skiers will compete in Moguls, Aerials, Ski Cross, Ski-Halfpipe and Ski Slopestyle whilst boarders will take part in Snowboard Parallel Giant Slalom, Snowboard Cross, Halfpipe, Slopestyle and Big Air, all of which will be battled out at Bokwang.
The new Jongseon Alpine Centre is that controversial new downhill skiing centre, created between 2014 and 2017, with the biggest vertical in Korea. It has been built to host the downhill alpine events including Super-G and Alpine Combined as well as the big men’s and women’s downhills. The men’s course is 2,852m long with 825m of vertical and a steepest pitch of 31.8%.
Finally, the Yongpyong Alpine Centre is one of South Korea’s largest ski resorts. It will host the slalom and giant slalom ski events. Slalom is of course the sport where Alain Baxter won our first Olympic bronze medal at the Salt Lake Games in 2002 and where we have our best hope on the alpine skiing side of Team GB in the shape of Dave Ryding.
Some Quirky Facts
Did you know…
- South Korea is rated number 1 as the world’s safest global destination based on the “Crime Index by Country 2016”.
- Tonga was admitted to the International Ski Federation (FIS) in July last year, and now a London-born skier of Tongan descent, Kasete Naufahu Skeen, is aiming to compete in the Giant Slalom and Super Giant Slalom as part of a team of four skiers to represent the Pacific island.
- South Korea investigated ways to share Olympic hosting with North Korea, but North Korea is reported to have turned down the invitation and instead built its own ski area.
- US-based Brolin Mawejje, 24, is hoping to represent his country in snowboarding and become the first-ever Ugandan at the Winter Olympics.
Getting To The Games
The jury is currently out on how easy it will be to attend the Games if you want to go in person. Tour operators who have organised trips during previous Olympics or offer ski trips to South Korea anyway are saying that they can’t access available accommodation so can’t offer packages. The best bet looks likely to be organising your own trip, and with the Olympic organisers promising fast, friendly, efficient transport between venues, if you can find accommodation, it should be a doddle.
Tickets for the 2018 Winter Olympics went on sale in October and cost from 20,000 Korean Won (about £14) to 900,000 Won (£620), although about half are priced at less than 80,000 Won (£54).
It easier to ski South Korea now outside of the Games dates, though, if you’d like to visit the venues before the Games. Ski Safari organise tours (skisafari.com/south-korea).
2018 Olympics Fact Box
Host city: Pyeongchang
Official site: pyeongchang2018.com
www.paralympic.org/pyeongchang-2018
www.teamgb.com/games/pyeongchang-2018
Events: 102 in seven sports (15 disciplines)
Olympic Opening Ceremony: 9 February 2018
Olympic Closing Ceremony: 25 February 2018
Paralympics Opening Ceremony: 9 March 2018
Paralympics Closing Ceremony: 18 March 2018
