by Abbey Zhu ’18, Feature Editor
The Winter Olympics started on February 9 and ended on February 25, and showcased the world’s top winter sport athletes. Here are ten historic moments from this year’s Olympics.
1. This was the first time South Korea hosted the Winter Olympics. The Olympics were held in Pyeongchang, not to be confused with Pyeongyang, the capital of North Korea. Pyeongchang is only fifty miles south of the demilitarized zone separating North and South Korea, which led to concerns about athletes’ safety.
2. However, to dispel tensions, North and South Korea marched at the Olympic ceremony under the Korean Unification Flag — a white flag with the entire Korean Peninsula in blue at its center. The Korean Unification Flag has been used at the 1991 World Table Tennis Championships, the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the 2004 Athens Olympics, the 2006 Winter Olympics in Italy, and the 2007 Asian Winter Games. Skiers from North and South Korea also trained together in North Korea before the games began.
3. The Koreas announced that they would form a joint women’s ice hockey team. This is the first time North and South Korea have ever contributed athletes to the same team for the Olympics. Though the joint team lost their debut game against Switzerland, they certainly won the crowd with the display of unification and teamwork.
4. Jamaica sent a women’s bobsled team to the Winter Olympics for the first time. The team included Jazmine Fenlator-Victorian, Audra Segree, and Carrie Russell.
5. Nigeria also sent its first women’s bobsled team to the Olympics. Three Nigerian-American women — Seun Adigun, Akuoma Omeoga, and Ngozi Onwumere — were the first people to represent an African country in bobsledding at the Olympics and the first Nigerians to ever compete at the Winter Olympics.
6. Adam Rippon was the first openly gay American male figure skater to qualify for the Winter Olympics. Rippon, who is 28 years old, is also the oldest person in American male figure skating to qualify for the Olympics for the first time since 1936.
7. 17-year-old Maame Biney is the first African-American woman to make the US Olympic short-track speed skating team and the American speed skating team in general. The Ghanaian-American skater won 500 m skating at the December US Olympic Team Time Trials, qualifying her for the Olympics.
8. Erin Jackson is the first African-American woman to compete in Olympic long-track skating and the second African-American woman to qualify for the American Olympic speed skating team. Jackson began speed skating barely four months ago, with the intention of training for the 2022 Winter Olympics. At the January 5 USA Olympic trials, however, Jackson raced a whole second faster than her personal best prior to the trials, clinching her spot on the long-track team.
9. 17-year-old Chloe Kim represented team USA at the Winter Olympics as a competitor in women’s snowboarding, and entered the competition as the favorite to win gold. Kim is Korean-American, and she is the first athlete in X-Games history to earn three medals before turning 16; she won her first medal at 13 years-old with a silver medal at the 2014 Winter X-Games in Aspen. Kim is also the first woman to land back-to-back 1080s and receive a perfect score of 100. In 2014, Kim qualified for the Sochi Olympics, but was too young to compete. With her gold medal at the Olympics, she is the youngest American to medal in snowboarding.
10. 18-year-old Nathan Chen entered the Olympics as the favorite to win gold for men’s figure skating. Chen was the first man in international skating history to land five quadruple jumps in the long program, which is four and a half minutes long. He was undefeated in the 2017-2018 figure skating season. Though Chen earned only a 17th-place finish in the short course program, he performed a historic six quadruple jumps in the long program to finish in 5th overall.
Sources:
https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/08/world/2018-pyeongchang-winter-olympics-fast-facts/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/17/asia/north-south-korea-olympics-flag-intl/index.html
https://www.vox.com/world/2018/1/17/16900972/north-korea-olympics-south-korea-march-together-flag
http://www.thisisinsider.com/who-is-adam-rippon-2018-1
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