Winter Olympic Games 2018 Final Review

[AmericanHero40 243]

Well i did enjoy the Olympics, just like every time. I did have multiple issues

 

1) Scheduling sucked, i know the blame from you goes to NBC but i dont believe it, hours and hours between events it just bad scheduling

2) The winds were just horrible, the Ski Jupming normal hill final was just horrible, all the Alpine Skiing rescheduling which i think really hurt Shiffrin's chances in slalom.

 

The best for USA:

1) Chris Mazdzer

2) Women's Hockey

3) Cross Country Team

4) Men's Curling

5) Shaun White, Chloe Kim, Red Gerrard

6) Shiffrin's 2 medals

 

Dissapointments

 

- I would put shiffrin here as well, the slalom 4th place is very disappointing, besides i was hopeful for a downhill apperance, however i really put it on the winds and all the rescheduling

- All Skating: Speed Skating is again very bad, just one bronze medal. Short Track one lucky silver medal, figure skating 2 bronze, and no medals for Nathan Chen

- Elena Myers Taylor won silver, but i really hoped for a gold there

 

Overall i hoped for about 10 golds and 20 total, but in reality it's way less then the 28 total of sochi and 37 of vancouver (even though we had 9 golds every time)

[heywoodu 16,460]

Negative stuff:

- Scheduling sucked balls, no need to go into details because I think we all know it

- Men's normal hill ski jumping, not due to whatever result, but just because of the wind and near-eternal delays

- Women's slopestyle snowboarding, no way that should have been allowed to get started, this was nothing but a lottery, at the very least with a decent winner

- The seconds after the last pair of the women's 5k, everything orange in Gangneung was cheering for Visser's gold, but Annouk van der Weijden and her friends/family were in tears for missing out on a medal by 0,19 seconds.

- Shared gold medal in the bobsleigh

- Men's snowboard halfpipe final, kinda bled to death in the end and the expectations were much higher after that qualifying

- Women's snowboard big air, a tiny bit better than expected with at least someone else than Gasser also doing something nice, but mostly I found those tiny jumps and turns an absolute snoozefest

 

Positive stuff:

- Ester Ledecka's gold in the super-G, definitely one of the highlights of any Games I've seen.

- Hanna Öberg's gold, such a nice and always smiling athlete surprising with Olympic gold, wonderful

- Swedish biathlon men's relay team taking away the gold, awesome

- Absolutely crazy women's biathlon relay

- Nice fights for bobsleigh gold in the two-man and women's competitions

- Simen Hegstad Krüger surprising his countrymen with skiathlon gold

- Johannes Klaebo being crowned as absolute great, at age 21. Not surprising, but given the huge pressure it's rather big.

- Randall/Diggins taking the teamsprint gold. Randall because it's a fantastic way to cap off a big career, Diggins because Diggins.

- Finally Olympic gold for Aljona Savchenko

- Men's ski halfpipe with some awesome tricks

- Men's snowboard halfpipe qualfiying, that was just amazing

- Men's ice hockey final, total craziness

- Germany men's ice hockey team

- The daughter of Marie Martinod (silver) high-fiving Cassie Sharpe (gold) after the women's ski halfpipe final

- Slovak ice hockey team beating Russia in the very first match

- Women's ice hockey final, even the shootouts were good

- David Gleirscher's sensational gold + Felix Loch giving it away in the last turns

- Exciting luge doubles, too bad Penz/Fischler missed out on gold, but it was close and that's always good

- Hungary's shorttrack relay team (some negative points for collecting a billion penalties individually though)

- Yara van Kerkhof's very surprising and lucky silver

- Suzanne Schulting all of a sudden taking gold

- Regino Hernandez giving Spain their first winter medal sinds 1992

- Zoi Sadowski-Synnott, only 16 years old, giving New Zealand their first winter medal since 1992, with same aged Nico Porteous following only hours later

- Spain and New Zealand both having won their last winter medal at the exact same event, 1992 women's slalom, and both finally winning their next one on a snowboard. Fun little coincidence

- Men's 500m speed skating, Lorentzen delivering gold to Norway

- Nuis winning the 1500m and once and for all saying goodbye to his title of King of Chokes

- Bloemen vs Bergsma in the 10k, some negative points for Kramer's race being the last one, that was anticlimactic as shit

- Norwegian men's team pursuit taking gold, Norway is back and that is fucking awesome, the sport really needed that

- Japan's women's team pursuit taking gold and their Dutch coach in tears after all the effort being put in specifically for that gold

- Nao Kodaira winning the 500m gold

- Esmee Visser's 5k gold, when in November she was basically completely unknown and only then had her first TV interview after a good race in the World Cup's B division (where she was asking basic questions like "Should I look at you, or to the camera?")

Edited February 26, 2018 by heywoodu

[De_Gambassi 1,369]

From a personnal perpestive, it was awfull; from a more borader view, it was ok I guess:

 

- The look/feeling of the games: Meh to say the least.

The venues were boring and the decorum was allready seen a thousand of times. Nothing will make history here. The snow events were held in front of empty crowds and the fandom in the ice events leave me quite puzzled. We didn't feel any passion for the games, and considering the reviews from people that were there, I don't think there was any. Vancouver was so much better in this regard, without even speaking of Lillehammer

 

- Organisation: Good.

We didn't have any drama with the venues before the games. Everything was ready way before the Games started. On the field, everything went smooth with very helpfull locals.Security was tight but not over the top. On the other hand, the schedule was awfull.

 

-Performances: Ok

We only had a few of historical moments (White, Ledecka, the german ice hockey team, etc.), but I'm not sure we could ask for more with the winter Games.

[heywoodu 16,460]

I forgot one of my main negative points, definitely the biggest one from a personal point of view: seeing Jaqueline Mourão of Brazil not competing at her level, which made it just impossible to not think things like "well, that could have been done better by my girlfriend, who was the 2nd in line for that quota spot and missed out because of being a few seconds too slow and competing in much harder competitions in terms of getting FIS points."

[dcro 10,211]

It's hard to remember all the moments at once, but I'll give it a try...

 

Positive stuff...

-Iivo Niskanen - nuff' said. Best 50km mass start ever.

-Awesome Tina Weirather winning an awesome medal for Liechtenstein. Watching the medal ceremomy where Princess Nora of Liechtenstein proudly handed the bronze to Tina was just. 

-Carlijn Achtereekte's amazing win in the 3000m from an early pair.

-Hungary's gold in the short track relay. After million near misses.

-Women's 30km was quite exciting as well, though not in terms of a winner.

-Men's singles luge was right up there in terms of excitement. Ledecka is a popular choice for the biggest upset, but for me that title definitely goes to Gleirscher.

-Mixed curling turning out to be a success, but not as exciting as men's event where USA came from nowhere and played masterfully in the knockout stages. Bronze medal match between SUI and CAN was quite exciting as well.

-Men's 15km freestyle, not that much the battle for the medals, but rather following the Project Bogota and other exotic skiers whose qualification we've been following for months. German Madrazo crossing the finish with Mexican flag was the icing on a cake.

-Unbelieveably exciting women's biathlon relay.

-Great women's ice hockey that went to a shootout. Emotional ending was fulfilled when the stadium DJ played "Don't stop believing", loved that.

-Croatia getting back on the sliding track with luge and bobsleigh, even though the injuries prevented some better results.

-Slovakia's win over OAR in hockey.

-Belgium, Liechtenstein, Hungary, Spain and New Zealand all winning their first medal in this century.

-Spellbounding performance from Savchenko/Massot. Couple of other briliant figure skating routines (Shibs, Ivett Toth and short dance as a whole come to mind).

 

Negative stuff...

-Scheduling. Not all blame could be put on TV houses. We often had 5 events at the sam time and yet zero events couple of hours before. If anything, that goes against TV scheduling.

-Delays, both weather caused and technically caused (slopestyle)

-Sparse crowd at a lot of events. Very one sided crowd in other events.

-Women's short track relay, women's slopestyle, PGS, men's NH and all other robberies/unfair competitions.

-Annouk's 4th place

-Ridiculously hard slopestyle and/or cross courses. If those sports need to get very dangerous to be exciting then they have no place at the Olympics!

-Plenty of injuries.

-Bobsleigh ties.

-Makarainen finishes her Olympic career with no medals.

Edited February 26, 2018 by dcro

[Dimast 88]

These were the weakest Olympics in the last 30 years .. Empty arenas, bad schedule and weather, lack of excitement and passion, hockey without NHL, the transformation in x-games, and most importantly - a very nervous and difficult atmosphere. Too much negativity. Such this Olympics will remain in history. 

[Dimast 88]

[Pavlo 149]

The worst WOG i`ve seen

Cabaret with Russians (u either take them or leave them), no atmosphere - i felt it like an artificial creation on Korean territory just to have it done (sth like Hurghada in Egypt), terrible schedulling. Plus some "zero-feeling" of snow sports.

 

Poles - a bit under expectations, again bad atmosphere + lost potential 2010+2014

Edited February 27, 2018 by Pavlo

[intoronto 6,891]

Sochi's artifical $51 billion dollar games were the worst games ever. They runied the Olympics and no one wants the games because of them.

[De_Gambassi 1,369]

Il y a 1 heure , intoronto a déclaré:

Sochi's artifical $51 billion dollar games were the worst games ever. They runied the Olympics and no one wants the games because of them.

 

Not even close. The Olympics survived Montreal 76, they'll survive Sochi 2014