Photo Courtesy of Patrick Semansky / Shutterstock
Last Friday, Feb. 9, the 23rd Winter Olympic Games commenced with the opening ceremony in PyeongChang, South Korea. 2,920 athletes from 92 nations gathered in the northeastern city near the border with North Korea to compete in 102 events derived from fifteen winter sports. The first week of competition brought victory for some, and inevitably, defeat for others.
As of Tuesday, Norway leads the field with eleven gold medals and 29 medals total, tailed by Germany, with eleven gold medals and 23 total, and Canada, with eight gold medals and 19 total. The United States sits back in sixth place with five golds and a total of twelve medals. However, the Olympic games are not intended to score or rank countries against one another — they are intended to bring athletes and teams from around the world together to compete regardless of nationality. Thus, all such rankings are unofficial and merely reflect the performance of individual athletes rather than a competition between nations, which the Olympic games do not advocate.
This being said, most countries take great pride in seeing their athletes perform well. The United States, though suffering defeats in some areas and lagging behind in the top competition, has seen its share of incredible victories. So far, five Americans have won gold medals: Shaun White and Chloe Kim in half-pipe snowboarding, Redmond Gerard, and Jamie Anderson in slopestyle snowboarding, and Mikaela Shiffrin in skiing.
Perhaps America’s favorite performance so far was that of Redmond Gerard, a seventeen-year-old snowboarder originally from Rocky River, Ohio. He won a gold medal in men’s slopestyle in an incredible performance on Feb. 11. In the qualifying heat the previous day, Gerard debuted as an olympian, earning a score of 82.55, which qualified him for finals in his second run. The next day, he started off with two dud runs, in which he earned scores of 43.33 and 46.40, putting all his his cards into his third and final run.
Despite this pressure, Gerard gave his best performance of both days, earning a score of 87.16, and securing an unexpected gold medal position. This victory made Red Gerard the youngest American to medal in snowboarding, and the first Olympic gold medalist born in the 21st century (he was born on June 29, 2000). Later, he revealed on Jimmy Kimmel Live that he had not only overslept, but lost his coat, a men’s small, and worn a teammate’s, a men’s large, the day of the finals. Perhaps he has become a favorite because he was the first American gold medalist in Pyeongchang, due to the unlikelihood of his victory, or because of his aloof, youthful charm. No matter the cause, Red Gerard won not only the gold medal, but the hearts of many Americans watching his miraculous run.
Chloe Kim, also only seventeen years old, won gold in the women’s half-pipe, making her the youngest woman to win an Olympic snowboarding medal. Though born and raised in California, Kim trained in Switzerland for more than two years before returning to the United States, nearly instantly becoming a professional and competing in the X Games. Unlike Gerard, she dominated the half-pipe both days of the event, with only one bad run out of five total. She won with a near perfect score of 98.25, far above any competition.
Snowboarding has been the one sport the United States has dominated, winning four gold medals, three more than any other country. American teams and athletes have lagged behind such countries as Norway, Canada, Germany, and the Netherlands in almost every other event. But this is to be expected, considering that snowboarding originates from the United States, as it was invented in the 1960s.
In the political scene, the proximity of PyeongChang to the North and South Korean border caused a fair amount of controversy, with some teams almost refusing to come in light of the dangerous tensions between the two Korean states. However, North Korea surprisingly agreed to participate in this year’s games, as well as help form a unified Korean women’s hockey team. On Jan. 17, North and South Korea met to organize this team, which consists of twelve women from North Korea and 23 from South Korea. Additionally, and perhaps even more surprisingly, the athletes of the two countries marched together in the opening ceremony as simply Korea. This may signal the beginning of improving relations between the Korean states, as the Jan. 17 meeting marked the first time North and South Korea held a formal meeting and discussion in two years. Whether or not this brief union will have any bearing on future relations between North and South Korea remains to be seen, but the 2018 Winter Olympic Games have certainly achieved some of what the Olympics hope to foster: unity between countries.
