Marcel Hirscher, the all-time best, finally gets his gold

Marcel Hirscher, the all-time best, finally gets his gold

JEONGSEON, South Korea — Remember a few years back when LeBron James took his talents to Miami and people were, like, the guy has to win an NBA title to prove he’s one of the all-time greats?

Same when, back in the day, John Elway hadn’t yet won a Super Bowl with Denver, and the noise was all about how he had to win to cement his legacy? 

In Austria, alpine ski racing is some amazing combination of the NFL, NBA, MLB and every other thing that can come to mind. As they ski down rivers of ice, the country’s ski stars turn into pop culture heroes who all but walk on water.  

Among its alpine legends, and we are talking Toni Sailer, Franz Klammer, Hermann Maier and many more, the evidence would strongly suggest that Marcel Hirscher is perhaps the greatest men’s alpine skier of all time. Except — he had never won an Olympic gold medal.

Until Tuesday.

For more, please visit NBCOlympics.com: http://bit.ly/2o3Zwef

No race yet for Shiffrin? No problem

No race yet for Shiffrin? No problem

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — Disappointed at the postponement of Monday’s women’s giant slalom because of the weather?

Not Mikaela Shiffrin.

“It’s a bummer that we’re not able to race today," she said. "But with the training block I’ve had, I’m prepared and feeling good.

“I’ll use this time to continue to train and re-focus on Wednesday’s slalom race. We have a great gym and space to eat and take plenty of naps, so I’ll use this time to recharge.”

In a perhaps not immediately obvious way, postponement of the giant slalom — Shiffrin’s second-best event — may serve to further her overall medal prospects here at the PyeongChang Olympics.

For more, please visit NBCOlympics.com: http://bit.ly/2nSUn9C

Sometimes you do miss your shot

Sometimes you do miss your shot

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — This is what it’s like when you work so hard and you dream so big and it’s just not your night.

It hurts.

The United States has never won an Olympic medal in biathlon, the ski-and-shoot sport. Susan Dunklee won a silver last year at the world championships in Hochfilzen, Austria. Thus hopes were high that she might deliver Saturday night in the women’s 7.5-kilometer sprint. 

It was not to be. To be a contender in biathlon, you not only have to ski fast, you have to shoot well. The 7.5 km event involves 10 shots, five from a prone position, five standing up. Dunklee missed one of the first five, from the prone position, then — inexplicably — four of the final five.

For more, please visit NBCOlympics.com: http://bit.ly/2nYkew3

Moral victories not enough: Diggins fifth in skiathlon

Moral victories not enough: Diggins fifth in skiathlon

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — The U.S. racer Jessie Diggins finished fifth Saturday in the women’s skiathlon. That marked the best individual finish for an American in an Olympic cross-country ski race since 1976, when Bill Koch took silver — still the only medal the United States has won in the discipline.

It is a measure of the expectations the American team has for these PyeongChang Games that, afterward, Diggins — golden glitter on her cheeks — was pleased but hardly elated.

Moral victories are no longer good enough.

The Americans are here for medals. Diggins’ performance Saturday hints at what should — should — be to come.

For more, please vist NBCOlympics.com: http://bit.ly/2G19pAS

 

Unified: Korea marches together at 2018 opening ceremony

Unified: Korea marches together at 2018 opening ceremony

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — On a divided peninsula marked most in its recent history by war and division, the 2018 Olympic Winter Games opened Friday night as a tribute to the powerful symbolism of the five rings, the two Koreas punctuating the colorful parade of nations by marching into Olympic Stadium together.

On a chilly evening in a stadium just 50 miles from the demilitarized zone that since the armistice in 1953 has buffered North from South, athletes and officials from the two Koreas reprised a march behind a blue-on-white flag representing a united Korea.

The two sides had marched together at the opening ceremony at three prior Games, starting in 2000 at Sydney. For the first time at an Olympics, though, North and South will compete together — unified — in women’s ice hockey. Compare: at the 1988 Seoul Summer Games, the North boycotted.

As International Olympic Committee Thomas Bach said in the lead-up to the ceremony, “The Olympic spirit is about respect, dialogue and understanding,” adding that these Games “are hopefully opening the door to a brighter future on the Korean peninsula, and inviting the world to join in a celebration of hope.”

For more, please visit NBCOlympics.com: http://bit.ly/2nThaCr

Of course the IOC won on the 'invites' issue

Of course the IOC won on the 'invites' issue

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — For all the angst over the timing of the decision the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport issued Friday morning in denying the appeals of 47 Russian athletes and coaches to take part in the 2018 Olympic Winter Games, which — um, start Friday night — the decision itself was actually straightforward and, to be honest, easy.

As noted repeatedly in this space,  the International Olympic Committee was winning, and one could expect the IOC to keep winning.

Which it did once more Friday, temporarily perhaps putting the Russian doping saga on hold while the focus shifts to the lighting of the cauldron and, you know, the Olympic Games. 

Meet the 'new norm': same as the old norm

Meet the 'new norm': same as the old norm

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — Like a bad itch, the International Olympic Committee has a way of scratching on a recurring basis the in-house fiction that it can conjure up new ways to save astonishing sums of money in the staging of its franchise, the Games.

Here at its annual assembly, its 132nd session, the IOC unveiled its latest, a strategy it immediately dubbed the "new norm,” calling it a "Games changer."

This “new norm” outlines an “ambitious set of 118 reforms that reimagines how the Olympic Games are delivered.”

Buzzkill: this new norm is the same old-same old, at least where it counts: in winning public opinion.

IOC assembly as taxi confidential

IOC assembly as taxi confidential

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — Pretty much every culture has a saying that goes something like this: what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. 

There’s a corollary that goes like this, courtesy of the late and very excellent American comedian George Carlin: let’s not have a double standard — one standard will do just fine.

So it was especially rich to listen to the International Olympic Committee, at its 132nd session, its annual congress, carry on at length Tuesday over the Russian doping saga, in particular the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport’s decision last week to clear 28 Russians of doping at the Sochi 2014 Games and free 11 other Russians of life bans. 

The outrage! The frustration! The rancor! The conflict! And it was all on television, or Twitter, or Periscope, for everyone. Such theater!

Frosty in PyeongChang

Frosty in PyeongChang

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — Ryan Bailey is an American sprinter. 

He won a silver medal in the 4x100 relay at the London 2012 Summer Games. But he had to give it back because of teammate Tyson Gay’s doping conviction. Like many sprinters, Bailey then gave bobsled a go. Last January, Bailey tested positive himself for a stimulant in a case involving a dietary supplement called Weapon X. Based on a "light degree of fault,” a three-member American Arbitration Assn. panel gave him a mere six months off.

The United States Anti-Doping Agency appealed to the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport. In December, in a decision little noticed except in track and field and bobsled circles, in the arcane world of sports lawyering and of course in Ryan Bailey’s entourage, CAS slapped Bailey with two years — a signal to one and all not in the United States that anti-doping jurisprudence in the United States might well be considered, well, weak.

What in the world does this have to do with the CAS decision last Thursday to clear 28 Russians of doping at the Sochi 2014 Olympics? The prospect of an appeal from that decision to the Swiss Federal Tribunal? Tensions between the World Anti-Doping Agency, CAS and the International Olympic Committee? 

Pretty much nothing, and at the same time — it's a riff on everything.

 

Who wants to blame the USOC? Exactly -- why?

Who wants to blame the USOC? Exactly -- why?

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — The president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, opened a news conference here Sunday by reading a prepared statement that declared the IOC’s policy-making executive board was “deeply shocked and saddened” by the “abuse scandal” rocking USA Gymnastics and Michigan State.

The board also, Bach said, expressed its “moral support for the victims and applauded the courage of the victims who gave testimony.”

The IOC, Bach further said, “took note of the ongoing independent investigation,” the U.S. Olympic Committee announcing Friday it had selected New York law firm Ropes & Gray LLP to conduct the inquiry, and “hopes that this will also give clarity to the responsibilities of the different parties.”

USA Gymnastics clearly has a lot to answer for.Michigan State as well.

The FBI, too, as the New York Times made plain in a blockbuster account published over the weekend, the agency taking a year to pursue the case — the paper identifying at least 40 girls and young women who say Larry Nassar molested them between July 2015, when the matter was first reported to the FBI, and September 2016, when the Indianapolis Star published its first accounts.

For all that, an issue for many, including on Capitol Hill: what about the USOC? 

Everyone, it seems, is looking for someone to blame. It’s entirely unclear, however, that — without more — it should be the USOC.