By: Ruth Woldemedhine ’21 and Cara Williams ’21
Today marks the opening ceremony for the twenty third Winter Olympics, taking place in PyeongChang, South Korea. The Olympics this year are spanning from Friday, February 9th to Sunday, February 25th. The Olympics originated as a festival in Olympia, Greece as more of a religious experience than a sporting event. The Olympics started with many mythological aspects, but as they evolved, they lost this aspect and the Games turned into more of a tourist attraction.
Eventually, the Olympics were banned in Greece, but were brought back in 1612 when the UK founded a similar sporting event. The International Olympic Committee was founded in 1894 in France, which led to the Olympics’ evolvement to where it is today. The first Winter Olympics took place in 1924 in Chamonix. Many countries in the world today come together and bring their best athletes to compete every two years in the Winter Olympics.
This year Team USA features athletes from 31 different states, with the highest population coming from our home state of Colorado.
Some of the athletes from Colorado that are competing in PyeongChang include:
- Lindsey Vonn from Vail in alpine skiing
- Mikaela Shiffrin from EagleVail in alpine skiing
- Casey Andringa from Boulder in freestyle skiing
- Tess Johnson from Vail in freestyle skiing
- Nicole Hensley from Lakewood in ice hockey
- Troy Terry from Highlands Ranch in ice hockey
- Jake Patts from Eagle in snowboarding
- Meghan Tierney from Eagle in snowboarding
For a full list of athletes from Colorado, visit this link here.
Some major events of the Winter Olympics include the ceremonies, with the Opening Ceremony taking place today and the Closing Ceremony taking place on Sunday, February 25th. Another major event is alpine skiing, with competition days on the 9th, 10th, 19th, and 20th of February and medal days on the 11th through the 15th, as well as the 17th, 18th, 21st, 22nd, 23rd, and the 24th. Freestyle skiing has competition days on the 9th, 15th, and 19th, and medal days on the 11th, 12th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 20th, 21st, 22nd, and 23rd of February.
A third major event taking place is ice hockey, with competition days from the 10th to the 20th and their medal days on the 21st, 22nd, 24th and 25th of February. Snowboarders will compete on the 10th, 11th, 21st, and 22nd of February, with the medal days taking place on the 11th through 16th, 23rd and 24th of February.
For a full list of the events at the Winter Olympics, visit this link here.
When freshman were asked about the Winter Olympics, they reacted with different opinions.
“Isn’t Missy Franklin competing?”-Mary Nour ’21
“I like how it is countries all over the world coming together to compete.”- Katelyn Marshall ’21
“I like skiing.”- Sara Higley ’21
Many of the Olympic events can be found on local TV stations such as 9News, CNN, ESPN, and more.