Tag: Winter Olympics

Considering how corrupt the IOC is I doubt Kim Yuna will be upgraded to a gold medal:

The Korean Sport & Olympic Committee (KSOC) said Tuesday it will ask the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to reinvestigate the results of the women’s figure skating final at the 2014 Sochi Olympics after gold medalist Adelina Sotnikova recently admitted failing an initial doping test that year.  
   
Korean figure skater Kim Yuna took silver in the event after finishing second. If a review of Sotnikova’s 2014 tests were to go ahead and she was to test positive, the IOC could opt to eliminate her and elevate Kim to the gold medal spot.  
   
The decision to appeal comes after Sotnikova told a Russian YouTube channel that she failed a drug test in 2014, but was cleared after providing a second sample. Clearing an athlete based solely on a second sample is considered highly irregular. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but the judges from the competition were suspected of being corrupt as well. If you haven’t already I recommend watching on Netflix the show Icarus that goes into detail how the Russians cheated during the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.

At this point corruption and Olympics should be considered synonyms. Has anyone seen the Netflix series Icarus? At least this Olympics appears so far to not reach any where near that level of corruption:

 The Chinese Embassy in Seoul expressed “grave concern” Wednesday over the accusations of favorable judging for the Chinese team in a short track speed skating competition of the Beijing Winter Olympics.

Two South Korean skaters — Lee June-seo and Hwang Dae-heon — were disqualified in the semifinals of the men’s 1,000-meter race Monday night, with Chinese competitors reaching the finals.

It caused an uproar among many South Koreans, as they regard the short track speed skating judges as having been biased in favor of the Chinese team.

In a statement posted on its social messaging account, the embassy took issue with criticism by “some South Korean media outlets and politicians.”

“We can’t help expressing grave concern and proclaim a strict position,” its spokesperson stated.

Now that it is a “technical” issue, it should be handled by a professional and authoritative institution, the official noted.

“However, some South Korean media and politicians have criticized the Chinese government and Beijing Olympics as a whole, even instigating anti-Chinese sentiment, worsening the public sentiment of the two countries and drawing a backlash from Chinese online users,” read the statement.

It stressed that China can never accept such “irresponsible” behavior.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

One South Korean speed skater claims that China is getting home town refereeing during the Winter Olympics:

As disappointed as he was that his team crashed out early in the mixed team relay in short track speed skating in Beijing over the weekend, South Korean short tracker Kwak Yoon-gy seemed even more upset that China won gold thanks to what he claimed was biased judging.

In a scrum with South Korean reporters Sunday, a day after China won the inaugural Olympic gold in the mixed relay on home ice, Kwak said it was difficult to describe the mixed bag of feelings he had about China’s path to the title.

“Looking at the way China won the gold medal, I felt bad that my younger teammates had to watch something like that,” Kwak, 32, said. “I thought to myself, ‘Is this really what winning a gold medal is all about?’ Things all just felt very hallow.” (……)

“I was watching that race unfold. I figured China, ROC and the U.S. would get penalized,” said Kwak, who didn’t compete for South Korea in the new relay event. “The Dutch skaters who were watching it with me said the same thing. But as the review dragged on, I figured China was going to be allowed to progress. And when the call was finally made, I found it difficult to accept it.”

Kwak, who is competing in his third and final Olympics in Beijing, said he had never seen a case where a relay team was let off the hook after missing an exchange entirely.

“If it had been any other country than China in that situation, I wondered if that team would still have been allowed to reach the final like that,” Kwak added.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Considering the Moon administration’s chummy relationship with the thugs in Pyongyang, it should be no surprise they will not take a stand against the democracy crackdown in Hong Kong, crushing of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, and the aggressive territorial expansion activities of the CCP:

South Korea is seeking to play its “role as the previous host nation” of the Winter Olympics, First Vice Foreign Minister Choi Jong-kun said Thursday, alluding that Seoul is less likely join the US in a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Beijing Games. 

Choi made the remarks during an interview with local radio station TBS, stressing that the upcoming Beijing Olympics are a “relay of Northeast Asian Olympics from PyeongChang to Tokyo and Beijing and are very meaningful.” 

His remarks suggest that Seoul is tilting toward opting out of the US-led diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Games slated for Feb. 4 to 20. But he clarified the “government has not yet made any decisions.”

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.

The Olympics continue to prove to be extremely wasteful and Pyeongchang is the latest example:

Gangwon Province is mired in massive debts after hosting the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang earlier this year.

The mountainous province with a population of 1.5 million had to host the biggest Winter Olympics so far, and six months on conflict with locals and unpaid wages continue to plague the local government, while the astronomically expensive venues sit empty.

The biggest headache is what to do with the speed skating rink, ice hockey center and Alpensia Sliding Center that have proved a bottomless pit of maintenance costs.

The province has to fork out W20.3 billion until 2022 just to keep the facilities running, but nobody knows what will happen afterwards (US$1=W1,109). Gangwon Province has asked the National Assembly to have the central government take on 75 percent of the upkeep costs, but the central government refused since it could set a bad precedent for allocating state funds.

The alpine skiing venue in Jeongseon, which was built on a 101-hectare piece of land owned by the Korea Forest Service, faces demolition. The government footed 75 percent of the W203.4 billion cost of building it and Gangwon Province the rest. A precondition was to return the land to the government after the Winter Olympics, but now locals want to keep it, hoping that the facility can generate income for the remote province.

Environmentalists and the KFS insist it must be demolished and the forest restored.  [Chosun Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

Members of the women’s and men’s 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics curling teams are welcomed by residents of Euiseong, 334 kilometers southeast of Seoul, on March 12, 2018. The women’s team won a silver in curling, the first medal in the event for the country, at the Winter Games last month, making proud the city in North Gyeongsang Province where four of the five team members are originally from. (Yonhap)

From the old Soviet Union to today’s Russian Federation, some bad habits have proven difficult to break. Here is… https://t.co/HW4Rl7hzX5

— tomcoyner (@tomcoyner) February 24, 2018

South Korea’s “Garlic Girls” look like they will get a chance to cash in on their Winter Olympic fame by endorsing vacuum cleaners:

As curling’s growing popularity in the nation is on rise, “Team Kim” (because all five players’ last names are Kim), or the “garlic girls” (because of Uiseong’s specialty crop), are considered the top choice for endorsements for certain manufacturers. The way they sweep the ice, the way they control the stones, they could make perfect commercials _ thought vacuum cleaner makers.

On South Korean electronic appliance manufacturers, from global brands such as Samsung and LG to local competitors like Dayou Winia, Yujin Robot and Dyson, the curling team has made a strong impression. Following the PyeongChang Olympics where the athletes will leave a huge footprint, commercial endorsements featuring them can potentially create a strong marketing effect for whoever hires them.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

Downtown Seoul today: Olympic spirit and right wing protest mash up pic.twitter.com/nSyQnqw54g

— Alastair Gale (@AlastairGale) February 24, 2018

I could only imagine what Koreans would be saying if the roles were reversed?:

South Korean snowboarder Lee Sang-Ho recorded one of the closest victories of the Winter Olympics, beating out Slovenia’s Zan Kosir by .01 in the semifnals of the parallel giant slalom event.

But should the result have been the other way around? NBC’s angles of the finish line appeared to show both Kosir’s board and hand crossing the line both well ahead of Lee’s board and hand. (The winner is the first racer who crosses the line with any part of his body.)

And here you thought you’d put bad replay decisions behind you with the end of the NFL season.  [Yahoo Sports]

You can read more at the link, but the photo finish shows that Kosir clearly beat Lee.  Some how I doubt Slovenians will be giving Lee the treatment that Koreans gave American Apolo Anton Ohno during the 2002 Winter Olympics:

The fan culture also can boil over. Athletes from opposing countries have received death threats. Back in 2002 in Salt Lake City when Apolo Anton Ohno won his controversial gold with Kim Dong-sung disqualified for blocking, a manufacturer made three different editions of toilet paper with his face on. The USOC servers also crashed due to the number of emails complaining about Ohno’s triumph and the USA team withdrew from the following year’s world championship in South Korea through solidarity with Ohno. Later at the 2002 FIFA World Cup, the South Koreans paid homage to Kim with their short track celebration after Ahn Jung-whan equalised against the United States.  [ESPN]