Due to popular demand, I am
obliged to document the real reason we are here: the Olympics! I'll defer to
John's Blog for more/better pictures. We went to six events that are listed below. Let’s begin.
Ski jumping qualifier
The first event we saw was ski jumping. It was amazing how far those guys flew. It was cold, but not too cold. For more on that, see
our brother John's blog. Between rounds, about 10 people on skis re-conditioned the
landing area, which is steeply sloped. To deal with this, the skiers staggered
themselves, so if one began falling down the slope, they wouldn’t hit people
below them like dominoes. Ski jumping is a sight to behold.
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| Carefully reconditioning the ski jumping landing area |
Snowboarding qualifier
The next day, we spent watching the
last snowboard jump. The snowboard course is so long that it is hard to watch
the entire thing. It was really cold, so we went inside for a while. As with
ski jumping, snowboarding course is about a 1.5 hour long trip up into the
mountains. During the bus rides, I try and learn more Korea, but I’m unsure if
I’ll ever finish.
Heck, I’m still learning English, and I’m 30.
John discovered the wonders of Pork Buns (known as Ho-Bbang here). He also learned about the wonders of Korean
pricing. These guys don’t gouge you the way Americans do. 85 cents for a bottle
of water inside the secure zone? HECK
YEAH!
Biathlon
Event 3 was biathlon. Again, it was a bus ride up to the top of a
cold mountain. For those not “in the know” like myself immediately prior to the
event, biathlon consists of skiing and shooting. The course consists of a 2500m cross-country
circuit and a rifle range. We watched a 10km biathlon, so the players took 4
laps. When they completed a lap, they would go to the rifle range, and shoot at
targets, and for every target they missed they would take a penalty loop around
a ~100m penalty ring. There were 85 skiers,
each individually timed, staggered at ~30 second intervals, so keeping track of
the progress was impossible, but it was a sight to behold.
Foreground: the biathlon track, Background, shooting range, Right: a portion of the penalty loop
Luge
The next night, we went up the
mountain to the bob sled track, and watched the luge. Like all previous events
aside from ski jumping, the entire track was not in view. For me the best part
was getting to shout the names of various countries as the sleds went by at
some awful speed. The only sad thing was that someone crashed (not too badly)
in front of us. We didn’t see the start
of it, but her sled started wobbling, hit the wall, and a skate broke off from
it, and she skidded to a stop. She seemed fine and walked off the track, but it
was not clear if she was injury free.
Hockey
Most recently, we watched the US
Women’s hockey team mop the floor with those poor athletes from Russia. It
seemed like a hollow victory given that in all likelihood, half the Russian
team got banned for the doping scandal.
It was fun to see hockey for the first time in a decade. I sat next to a
Korean college student, and we taught him and his buds some of the basics of
the game. They don’t play hockey much in
Korea. Word has it that the United Korea
team only got to practice together for two weeks, and that’s why they fell
apart when they played Switzerland a few nights ago. The North Koreans are unfortunately not
allowed to talk too much. We have not
knowingly seen any either.
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| Face off! |
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| Dutch brass band, complete with wooden shoes |
Curling
On our last full day in Gangneung, we went and watched
curling. We learned a thing or two about it before going. For instance, the ice isn’t smooth, it has
been sprayed with water droplets to make a bumpy surface. Also, the players
have one shoe that slides and one that does not. I can’t help but think they
get very lopsided that way, so perhaps they switch sides every so often. A
point is awarded to the team who slides their stone as close to the center of
the target as possible. The overall strategy is to try and knock the other team’s
stones away from the “bull’s eye,” blocking the other teams stones, and getting
their own stones as close to the bullseye as possible.
Curling is fun to watch because it is subdued like golf, but
lacks all the icky business stuff that seems associated with golf. You can see
all four games at once so if one gets slow, you can watch another one. In the games we watched, there was a US vs
Japan game, where Japan beat us pretty badly.
After curling there were some pretty serious wind gusts, so we went to
find shelter outside the Olympic park, which had too many tents. We wound up
eating some KFC (Korean Fried Chicken).
I told the people there that it tasted better than Kentucky Fried
Chicken, and I meant it. Korean versions of American fast/junk food just taste
better, because they aren’t loaded with as much starch/sugar/fat. Coke is drunk
out of shot glasses for instance.
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| A highlight of the competition was Chosun guards leading in the teams. |
We’ll keep posting about our Gangneung for a while even though
we have moved on, since we’ve gotten a bit behind. Cheers!
