2018 Winter Olympics

, nations = 93
, athletes = 2,922 (1,680 men and 1,242 women)
, events = 102 in 7 sports (15 disciplines)
, opening =
, closing =
, opened_by = President Moon Jae-in
, cauldron = Kim Yun-a
, stadium = Pyeongchang Olympic Stadium
, winter_prev = Sochi 2014
, winter_next = Beijing 2022
, summer_prev = Rio 2016
, summer_next = Tokyo 2020

The 2018 Winter Olympics ( ko, 2018년 동계 올림픽, Icheon sip-pal nyeon Donggye Ollimpik), officially the XXIII Olympic Winter Games (french: Les XXIII^es Jeux olympiques d'hiver; ko, 제23회 동계 올림픽, Jeisipsamhoe Donggye Ollimpik) and also known as PyeongChang 2018 ( ko, 평창2018, Pyeongchang Icheon sip-pal), were an international winter multi-sport event held between 9 and 25 February 2018 in Pyeongchang, South Korea, with the opening rounds for certain events held on 8 February, a day before the opening ceremony.

Pyeongchang was elected as the host city for the 2018 Winter Games at the 123rd IOC Session in Durban, South Africa in July 2011. This marked the second time that South Korea had hosted the Olympic Games (having previously hosted the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul), as well as the first time it hosted the Winter Olympics. The 2018 Games marked the third time that an Asian country had hosted the Winter Olympics, after Sapporo 1972 and Nagano 1998, both in Japan. It was also the first Winter Olympics to be held in mainland Asia, and the first of three consecutive Olympic Games to be held in East Asia, preceding the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan and the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, China.

The 2018 Games featured 102 events over 15 disciplines, a record number of events for the Winter Games. This is the first edition in Winter Olympic Games history to feature more than 100 medal events, four of which made their Olympic debut in 2018: "big air" snowboarding, mass start speed skating, mixed doubles curling, and mixed team alpine skiing. A total of 2,914 athletes from 93 teams competed, with the national debuts of Ecuador, Eritrea, Kosovo, Malaysia, Nigeria and Singapore.

After a state-sponsored doping program was exposed following the 2014 Winter Olympics, the Russian Olympic Committee was suspended, but selected athletes were allowed to compete neutrally under the special IOC designation of " Olympic Athletes from Russia" (OAR), provided they could meet certain anti-doping requirements. North Korea agreed to participate in the Games in spite of tense relations with South Korea. The two nations paraded together at the opening ceremony as a unified Korea, and fielded a unified team (COR) in the women's ice hockey.

South Korea ranked seventh overall at the 2018 Winter Games, with five gold medals and 17 overall medals. South Korea has traditionally been a country that won many medals in short track speed skating, but in this competition, it also won medals in skeleton racing, curling and skiing. South Korea's Yun Sung-Bin won a gold medal in men's skeleton racing, the first Olympic gold ever won by Asia in the sledding event. Norway led the total medal tally with 39, followed by Germany at 31 and Canada at 29. Germany and Norway were tied for the highest number of gold medals, both winning 14.

Bidding and election

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Pyeongchang was elected as the host city at the 123rd IOC Session in Durban, South Africa, on 6 July 2011, earning the necessary majority of at least 48 votes in just one round of voting. Winning 63 of the 95 votes cast in the first secret ballot, Pyeongchang received more votes than its competitors combined, overwhelmingly beating Munich in Germany, which received 25 votes, and Annecy in France, which received seven.

This was South Korea's third consecutive bid for the Winter Olympics, having been defeated by Vancouver and Sochi respectively in the final rounds of voting for the 2010 and 2014 Games. Earlier, PyeongChang lost to Vancouver with a difference of 3 votes in bidding the 2010 Olympics, and lost to Sochi with a difference of 4 votes in bidding the 2014 Olympics. Since then, South Korea made great progress in preparing to host the Winter Olympics and succeeded in hosting the 2018 Olympics after three challenges.

After winning the election, Pyeongchang became the third Asian city to host the Winter Olympics. Also, South Korea became the second country in Asia to host both the Summer (1988 Seoul Olympics) and Winter Olympics.

Development and preparation

On 5 August 2011, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced the formation of the Pyeongchang 2018 Coordination Commission. On 4 October 2011, it was announced that the Organizing Committee for the 2018 Winter Olympics would be headed by Kim Jin-sun. The Pyeongchang Organizing Committee for the 2018 Olympic & Paralympic Winter Games (POCOG) was launched at its inaugural assembly on 19 October 2011. The first tasks of the organizing committee were putting together a master plan for the Games as well as forming a design for the venues. The IOC Coordination Commission for the 2018 Winter Olympics made their first visit to Pyeongchang in March 2012. By then, construction was already underway on the Olympic Village. In June 2012, construction began on a high-speed rail line that would connect Pyeongchang to Seoul.

The International Paralympic Committee met for an orientation with the Pyeongchang 2018 organizing committee in July 2012. Then-IOC President Jacques Rogge visited Pyeongchang for the first time in February 2013.

The Pyeongchang Organizing Committee for the 2018 Olympic & Paralympic Winter Games created Pyeongchang WINNERS in 2014 by recruiting university students living in South Korea to spread awareness of the Olympic Games through social networking services and news articles.

Medals

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. Gold medals contained 99 percent of silver and 1 percent of gold, which is a traditional composition for Olympic gold medals. At they were the heaviest medals in the Olympic history.

Torch relay

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.

Venues

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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 County">Jeongseon. The indoor ice events were held in the nearby city of Gangneung.

Pyeongchang (mountain cluster)

The Alpensia Resort, Alpensia Sports Park in Daegwallyeong-myeon, Pyeongchang, was the focus of the 2018 Winter Olympics. It was home to the Olympic Stadium, 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)

Gangneung (coastal cluster)

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 – 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)

Ticketing

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$) to ₩900,000 (~US$) while tickets for the opening and closing ceremonies ranged from ₩220,000 (~US$) to ₩1.5 million (~US$). The exact prices were determined through market research; around 50% of the tickets were expected to cost about ₩80,000 (~US$) 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.

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. However, as of 31 January 2018, 77% of all tickets had been sold.

The Games

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.

Sports

The 2018 Winter Olympics featured 102 events over 15 disciplines in 7 sports, 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.

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

Participating National Olympic Committees

A record total of 93 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 debut: Ecuador, Eritrea, Kosovo, Malaysia, Nigeria and Singapore. 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).

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. The two nations marched together under the Korean Unification Flag during the opening ceremony. 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. The two nations also participated separately: the South Korea team competed in every sport and the North Korea team competed in alpine skiing, cross-country skiing, figure skating and short track speed skating.

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.

Number of athletes by National Olympic Committee

Apart from the respective delegations, North Korea and South Korea formed a unified Korean women's ice hockey team.

Russian athletes were entitled to participate as Olympic Athletes from Russia (OAR) if individually cleared by the IOC.

Event scheduling

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. 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 lower attendance levels at the sessions.

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.

Calendar

:''All dates are KST (UTC+9)''

Medal table

Podium sweeps

Three podium sweeps were recorded during the Games.

Records

* 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. 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.
* German figure skaters Aliona Savchenko and Bruno Massot set a new ISU best free skating score of 159.31 in pair skating.
* 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 and a new ISU best combined total score of 206.07 in ice dance. French ice dancers Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron set a new ISU best free dance score of 123.35.
* Russian figure skater Alina Zagitova set a new ISU best short program score of 82.92 in Ladies' single skating.
* 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.
* 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.
* 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".
* Dutch athlete Jorien ter Mors became the first female athlete to win Olympic medals in two different sports at a single Winter Games; 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.
* 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. 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.
* 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.

Closing ceremony

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.

Broadcasting

Broadcast rights to the 2018 Winter Olympics were already sold in some countries as part of long-term broadcast rights deals, including the Games' local rightsholder SBS, which in July 2011 had extended its rights to the Olympics through 2024. SBS sub-licensed its rights to MBC and KBS.

On 29 June 2015, the IOC announced that Discovery Communications (now Discovery, Inc.) had acquired exclusive rights to the Olympics across all of Europe (excluding Russia) from 2018 through 2024. Discovery's pan-European Eurosport channels were promoted as the main broadcaster of the Games, but Discovery's free-to-air channels such as DMAX in Spain, Kanal 5 in Sweden, and TVNorge in Norway, were also involved in the overall broadcasting arrangements. Discovery was required to sub-license at least 100 hours of coverage to free-to-air broadcasters in each market; some of these agreements required certain sports to be exclusive to Eurosport and its affiliated networks. The deal did not initially cover France due to the broadcast rights of France Télévisions, which run through to the 2020 Games. In the United Kingdom, Discovery held exclusive pay television rights under licence from the BBC
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