Winter Olympic Games 2018 Final Review

[dcro 10,211]

 

A thread for your overall reviews of the Pyeongchang Olympics, much like the Daily Reviews thread.

 

Some questions you may consider in the final review.

• What were your favorite moments of these Olympics?
• What were your biggest disappointments?
• Biggest upsets of the Games.

 

[Nathy 78]

It took me a little time to get into these Games, but once the Swiss athletes started to be involved and winning medals, it was easier

 

I have a few favorite moments:

• The double in women's ski slopestyle that was unexpected
• Cologna's 4th Olympic Gold Medal (tying Simon Ammann), shed some tears
• Zenhäusern's Silver Medal in slalom
• Gisin's Gold and Holdener's Bronze in the alpine combined
• The happiness of the Men's curling team when they won bronze
• USA Women's hockey team finally winning Gold again

My biggest disappointment is seeing Lara Gut leave South Korea without a medal She's so talented, it pains me that she ends up 4th too many times or doesn't finish races. I really hope she'll win Gold at some point.

 

There were a few big upsets as well:

• USA beating Sweden in curling for gold...
• Ledecka winning gold in 2 different sports...
• Canada not winning a medal in classic curling...
• Both Hirscher AND Kirstoffersen DNF in the slalom...
• Germany playing for (and almost winning) gold in men's hockey

There were probably others that I'm forgetting but these are the ones I'll remember.

 

Overall good Games for Switzerland, tying 1988 Calgary for the medals total (15) and surpassing the target (11) announced before.

[phelps 8,695]

overall review...

as I wrote in the poll's thread, I didn't enjoy these Games that much...

awful scheduling and other controversies didn't let me appreciate the few good things I just saw...

even many competitions weren't exciting at all...so, also the strictly sporting review is quite negative...

 

my favourite moments...

of course the 3 gold medals won by Italy (Michela Moioli's SBX above all)...

then, Chloe Kim's runs and the 3-way battle in the men's event in the snowboard Halfpipe, the women's Cross-Country Skiing relay and skiathlon, the highly controversial but so entertaining women's relay in Biathlon, the men's 10000m race in Speedskating, many Short Track races (despite the judges and the Koreans) and the men's single Luge final run...

 

the biggest upsets...

2 or 3 Italian missed chances (Sofia Goggia's Super-G race above all) and shameful performances...

the poor quality of the men's Ice Hockey tournament (despite the well known absence of the NHL stars, still I expected a lot more from it...also on the mere overall level of play)...

 

and I wouldn't call them upsets...let's name them "big surprises" (pleasant surprises, to me)...

Ledecka winning Gold in alpine skiing women's Super-G, the US boys winning the men's Curling tournament and Germany's Cinderella story in the men's hockey tournament

[Griff88 2,021]

1. My favorite moments is the fact that I can watch it.

 

2. The scheduling have too many 'holes' and that women's short track relay controversy..

 

3. LEDECKA!!

[hckošice 16,613]

From SVK view it was not a very successful games. Now when it´s over, I can present my personal wishes before the games.

 

I wanted and hoped for 5 medals (at least 1 gold the womens biathlons sprint) and the quarterfinals in hockey.

 

we got 3 medals one gold, not bad, but I still feel disappointed for the biathlons sprint, the strong wind during Kuzmina´s prone shooting denied her to enter the history. but at least she still showed that she is one of the best biathlete in history and won gold at 3 consecutive Olympics.

 

Another huge disappointing came in Alpine Skiing, Women´s slalom had to be our safest medal, but Slovakia experienced it´s biggest flop at the games right in this event, the disastrous Alpine games for us continued in Alpine Combined where Petra Vlhová finished fifth, mainly because too short slalom part and the elimination in the Team Event´s 1st round is just the perfect closing of bad Alpine Skiing competitions for us, hopefully it will be better in the future games, Petra is still young and may be our top leader of the Winter Olympics for at least 2-3 following games.

 

Some more noticeable moments, bad luck of Jozef Ninis who was 7th after Run 1 in mens luge but after a huge mistake (something didn´t happened to him for at least 5 years) finished outside the top 20. Terrible sport tragedy for Paulína Fialková with broken rifle in the opening shooting of the Mixed Relay resulting in the early end of our relay, Adam Žampa going for a great slalom 2nd run, but with big mistake including a pirouet finished outside top 20.

 

Apart 3 Kuzmina medals in 6 days we had also few nice results Paulína Fialková missing the Individual Biathlon podium only ba few seconds, 5th place of womens Biathlon relay and 5th place of Vlhová in Alpine Combined (her performance in her first ever downhill is quite promising for the future) Nicole Rajičová 5th best European womens single figure skater are at the top of the list..

 

Ice Hockey - you know that this sport is the mainly followed one here, peoples often not follow other events at all, but during the hockey matches the stores are closed and the whole country follow the matches...what a start it was beating the strong Russians, unfortunately it showed to be our only brightest moment, two losses with the USA 1-2 and a very hard and totally useless to Slovenia after the penalties shoot-outs meant 3 teams in this group finished with 4 points, and the mini-table between them send SVK to the last place. we got again the USA and failed again. Despite having the most points and best score from all teams playing the Round of 16 we still because of the most idiotic ranking system of this tournament finished 11th of the 12th teams...at first view this doesn´t mean a lot, but actually yes, since it´s the first counted criterium for next Olympic qualification and right now we are outside the top 9 direct qualification spots.

 

A national tragedy, what to say more....

 

..About general games..

Many things I´ll remember for the whole life. Ester Ledecká and her incredible Super-G, followed by more expected gold in PGS but conquered under extreme pressure.

Hungary´s first ever winter Olympic gold. Redmond Gerard winning the snowboarding slopestyle, Perinne Laffont winning the womens moguls, France winning the mixed biathlon relay or the fantastic battles in Figure skating Ice Dance and women´s singles. + the incredible flop of Felix Loch in the last meters of the last run, Stefan Hula and Kamil Stoch failures in the Normal Hill 2nd round and the top favs Shiffrin, Hirscher, Kristoffersen falling in Slalom ...maybe there some more, but I can not remember there right now

 

And yes ofc the very very bad scheduling, and bad weather in the first week but we can not blame the Koreans for this actually ofc, but for the miserable scheduling we can for sure

[Skijumpingmaster 54]

This was a great olympics for Norway. Taking a new record when it comes to the olympics with 39 medals . 

 

My favourite moment was probably Aksel Lund Svindals gold in Downhill. He has come back from injury 4 times , so him taking the gold is really impressive. This was also his last olympics.

 

The gold in team ski jumping was fantastic aswell. Despite being one of the greatest nations in ski jumping we have never taken the olympic gold. Robert Johanssons two bronze medals was awesome aswell , considered he has only been on the podium once.

 

And of course the triple in men's skiathlon . 

 

Something I really liked about this games was the big suprises: 

 

- Ledecka taking gold in Super G

- Germany taking silver in hockey

- US taking gold in curling

- Sweden taking gold in men's relay in biathlon.

 

My upsets will probably be the delays and reschedules . And imo it was a mistake to give the games to Pyeongchang , mainly because of all the wind. Pyeongchang is known for it's wind mills , there's actually a lot of windmills around the ski jumping hills. Weird right?

 

But as a norwegian I can't complain , so overall good games. 

[Rdbc 48]

This was my first time watching the Winter Olympics from start to finish (I was only 13 during last Winter Olympics)

 

I really really enjoyed 

- Mixed Doubles Curling

- Short Track Speed Skating 

- Alpine Skiing 

 

Some great memories I had were

- Anastasia (Russian mixed doubles curling women) yelling "SVEEEEEP" 

- Red Gerard winning our first gold

- Gold Medal for Men USA Curling & Women Ice Hockey

- Lindsey Vonn last Olympics  

 

I'm extremely excited for Beijing 2022! 

Edited February 25, 2018 by Rdbc

[pdr4332 261]

First of all, I enjoyed this Games too, even though I was not able to follow as intensively as the last one.

 

For the scheduling issues, let me point out, not really the Koreans are to blame here (from an European perspective), apart from having a 8 hours timezone difference, haha, but rather the IOC and their buddies at NBC&NBC Universal

Fortunately Eurosport Player and the re-watch feature of my cable TV provided me enough means to catch up (do not really do anything on public transport, so it was a good way to spend the time watching re-runs of Olympic events)

 

Favorite moments (some of):

- Hungary gold (even though I did not follow it live, as I didn't want to be disappointed if we dont win - I'am already trained on this from summer olympic canoe-kayak runs, haha :D)

- The amazing final of mens halfpipe at snowboard (which I was able to watch live) + the slopestyle from mens snowboard

- Some of the luge races (like Loch flop in the last meters of the race or surprising Gough win)

- LEDECKA
- Canada-USA and Sweden-USA curling (even though I do not watch this sport generally)

Disappointments:
- The Liu's were so unlucky in the individual short track events
- Latvia was also short of luck, particularly in bobsleigh

Upsets:
- Most of them were written down already, so just only one: LEDECKA   

[thepharoah 2,413]

As always i enjoyed Olympics , it's always a unique sporting event where u follow some sports for the 1st time , or at least you don't follow much , this Olympic was by far the best based on tv coverage on Arabic channels thanks to Bein Sport which really amazed me with this coverage , they almost broad casted all events at least in individual sports , the only problem for me with broadcasting with the bad scheduling , it's already hard to follow Olympics in Asian country where events start in 2 a.m local time here , so it was much harder to follow as many finals in 5 or 6 a.m and that's why I've missed a lot of Figure skating events here , for me the favorite moment was the men's mass start race in Biathlon , i've enjoyed every second of this race and i don't know how i was finding Biathlon not interesting enough , this sport became among my top list to watch when ever it's related to Winter sports , men's halfpipe where we had also some great competition , almost all speed skating and short track races i've really enjoyed them a lot, biggest disappointment i think when Russian Curling mixed team was disqualified after they won bronze , i was sad especially for the hottest Curler Anastasia Bryzgalova  , biggest upsets i think came with Russian and Chinese overall performance here , even though it was expected that Russia won't go much far in this olympics and ofc Canada's performance in Curling was among the biggest upsets here , Germany reaching men's ice hockey final , Ester Ledecka winning gold medal in alpine skiing , German teams performance in Biathlon Relays , Korea's big champions fall in the last day of short track , overall once again i've enjoyed every second of Olympics and i'm looking forward to follow much more winter sports events in the near future 

Edited February 25, 2018 by thepharoah

[LowerSaxony 205]

Favourite moments: -Seeing Arnd Peiffer surprisingly winning gold: he origins from only a few kilometres from my home town in Northern Germany (called Lower Saxony btw) - a part of Germany which has only very very few winter sport athletes (of course)

- Snowboard halfpipe general level made it really fun to watch, the (best) female athletes improves a lot during the last years

- Nordic combined guys gained their deserved olympic success after years of dominance - especially the team gold made me happy. Even though it was sad to see that the Norwegians were not in good shape (with the exception of Riiber).

- Finally seeing Tina Weirather winning a medal

- All venues, courses etc. seemed to be in a very good shape

 

Not so nice: - The lack of spirit and audience in the nordic and alpine skiing events, even though it was expected.

- The Big Air competitions: I do not see an additional value of including these events at the Olympics. I really enjoy halfpipe and slopestyle, but Big Air is just something like the last jump of slopestyle (maybe a bit higher) and all the falls made it hard to watch.

- Skicross/Snowboard cross: The courses are too hard and the number of injuries should make the IOC overthink their policy of only striving after the hardest course at the Olympics. Do they wait for a Nodar Kumaritashvili here before they do sth?