An isolationist's take on Pyeongchang 2018, part 1 of 3

The XXIII Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang County, South Korea were, in my opinion, one of the best Winter Olympics ever held. The South Koreans did a fantastic job of hosting the games, the Games were a major diplomatic and geopolitical victory for South Korean President Moon Jae-in, and there were plenty of surprising results and close finishes during the Games.

Given that my own foreign policy views tend to be very isolationist by American standards, a lot of people reading this blog post would find it surprising that I have a strong interest in the Olympics. The Olympics are pretty much the only major exception to my isolationist foreign policy views because I view the Olympics as a sporting event instead of a diplomatic event like the World Economic Forum in Switzerland or events of that nature.

Also, I take this opportunity to apologize to the Shibutani siblings and the rest of the U.S. Olympic figure skating team. I claimed in a blog post before the Games that the U.S. wasn't expected to win any medals in figure skating; the U.S. won a total of two medals in figure skating: a bronze in the team event, and a bronze by the Shibutani siblings in ice dancing.

Here are some of my favorite aspects and occurrences of the Pyeongchang Games:

• The unified Korean women's ice hockey team - As much as I despise the North Korean dictatorship, seeing the unified Korean women's ice hockey team, which consisted of players from both South Korea and North Korea, compete was incredibly special, even though the Korean unified team didn't even come close to winning a medal.
• Surprise U.S. victories in women's cross-country skiing and men's curling - Not until the Pyeongchang Games had Americans won gold in cross-country skiing and curling. Jessie Diggins and Kikkan Randall won America's first cross-country skiing medal in the women's team sprint event in a dramatic finish, and John Shuster skipped a team of rejects to a comeback gold medal victory in the men's curling tournament.
• The bobsled, luge, and skeleton track - The Alpensia Sliding Center that was built for the Pyeongchang Games was the ultimate test for the Olympic sliding sports of bobsled, luge, and skeleton: fast, but not overly fast like the Whistler track that was built for the 2010 Vancouver Games was, technical, particularly the "run breaker" section that a lot of competitors had trouble with, and unforgiving, in that, if a slider made a significant mistake, he or she had no chance of being able to recoup lost speed further down the track. There were some crashes in the sliding sports at the Pyeongchang Games, although, thankfully, there weren't any life-threatening injuries.
• Mixed doubles curling - In addition to the traditional, four-a-side men's and women's curling, mixed doubles curling, a form of curling contested by two-person, mixed-gender teams made its debut at the Pyeongchang Games. Prior to the Pyeongchang Games, I viewed mixed doubles curling as rather gimmicky, but, after seeing mixed doubles curling in the Olympics, I came away with a much more positive view of the mixed doubles form of curling.

Here are some aspects of the Pyeongchang Games that I wasn't fond of for varying reasons:

• The format of the team event in figure skating - There were a total of eight sessions that compromised the team event in figure skating (short and free programs in each of men's skating, ladies's skating, pairs skating, and ice dancing). This made the team event seem extremely long, and it also made the stand-alone figure skating and ice dancing events later on in the Games feel somewhat like reruns despite being medal events in their own right.
• The silver-medal loser/bronze-medal winner paradox in ice hockey and curling - In the ice hockey and curling tournaments, the medal finals are structured in such a way that the loser of the gold medal game automatically wins the silver medal without having to play another game, and the winner of a game between the two semi-final losers wins the bronze medal. This can lead to silver medalists being less gracious than bronze medalists in the same tournament, most notably when Canadian women's ice hockey player Jocelyne Larocque refused to wear her silver medal after her team lost the gold medal match to the United States, whereas none of the Finnish hockey players who were part of the bronze medal-winning team did anything like that during the medal ceremony. Larocque apologized for the incident. I would like to see a format restructuring in sports involving head-to-head matches and an elimination tournament in future Summer and Winter Olympics so that either there are separate gold, silver, and bronze medal games in which all medalists have to win a game/match to earn a medal, or both the silver medalist and bronze medalist(s) lose their final game/match.

The next Winter Olympics will be held in Beijing, China in 2022, while the next Summer Olympics will be held in Tokyo, Japan in 2020. The 2018 Winter Paralympics in Pyeongchang are scheduled for later this month, with U.S. television coverage on NBC, NBCSN, and Olympic Channel; the opening ceremony of the 2018 Winter Paralympics will be aired on NBCSN live at 5 A.M. Central Time on March 9.