Shiffrin: "I beat myself the wrong way today"

Shiffrin: "I beat myself the wrong way today"

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — Alpine racing is brutally difficult and especially unforgiving. On any given race day, a dizzying array of variables may come into play: weather, light, snow, wind, wax and more. 

Not to mention the weight of pressure, expectation and history.

It’s enough to make anyone upchuck. Even Mikaela Shiffrin. Who did exactly that Friday before the first of the two runs that make up the Olympic slalom.

“I guess everybody knows now, after puking before the first run,” Shiffrin would say after Friday’s racing had concluded and the scoreboard said she had taken fourth in her signature event, the slalom, “you know, that was me -- I don't know, it wasn’t even pressure, really, nerves. It's just -- I beat myself the wrong way today.”

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

Mikaela Shiffrin, with "nothing to lose," wins Olympic giant slalom gold

Mikaela Shiffrin, with "nothing to lose," wins Olympic giant slalom gold

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — As the late, great Tom Petty said, the waiting is the hardest part. 

Mikaela Shiffrin made it look — almost — easy. 

Confronted with weather-related delays that pushed back the start of her 2018 Winter Games. the American ski star captured the keen mental edge it takes to ski on the edge, but not beyond, to win Olympic gold in the women's giant slalom.

In Sochi, an 18-year-old Shiffrin won gold in slalom but finished fifth in GS. She vowed to become No. 1 in GS, too. 

Turning 23 next month, she is now a two-time Olympic champion, winner of a first medal for the United States in women’s giant slalom since Julia Mancuso's Torino 2006 gold. Shiffrin is also just the sixth woman in Olympic history to win gold in both the slalom and giant slalom, joining the likes of Andrea Mead-Lawrence of the United States and Croatia’s Janica Kostelić.

For more, please visit NBCOlympics.com: http://bit.ly/2GhF1Ca

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!