Korea opportunities

GREAT BRITAIN has sent its biggest ever Winter Olympics squad to South Korea - and it also stands a good chance of being its best ever too.

Four years ago in Sochi, Team GB equalled its best Winter Games performance with one gold, one silver and two bronze.

And, despite being a non-Alpine nation with little winter sports pedigree, there are realistic hopes of the team going at least one better at Pyeongchang 2018.

The official target, set by governing body UK Sport, is indeed for five medals to be won - and skeleton and curling would be two of the more obvious places to find British success.

In fact, since the tea-tray sport skeleton was re-introduced into the Olympics in 2002, Team GB has always won a medal in the women's competition.

Alex Coomber won bronze in Salt Lake City in 2002, four years before Shelley Rudman took silver in Turin, and eight years before Amy Williams became the first British individual gold medallist at a Winter Olympics for 30 years.

Lizzy Yarnold ensured we would not have to wait as long for the next individual Winter Olympic title with a dominant victory in the same event in Sochi.

Flagbearer Yarnold will defend her title in Pyeongchang alongside Laura Deas, while Dominic Parsons and Jerry Rice will partake in the men's competition.

Curling - with its instantly recognisable combination of brushes and polished granite stones - has also supplied its fair share of success in recent Games.

In Sochi, both the men's team and the women's team finished on the podium with the men taking silver and the women winning bronze.

Further back - in 2002 - housewife Rhona Martin famously caused a national sensation in the wee hours by leading Team GB to its first Winter Olympics gold since Torvill and Dean in 1984.

Of course, this time, it might just be that Britain cannot claim a medal in either skeleton or curling.

Winter sports, by their very nature, are highly unpredictable - and that certainly is something which short-track speed skater Elise Christie does not need to be told twice.

Christie, frankly, suffered a nightmare Games four years ago in Sochi. First, she was penalised in the 500m final, in which she had finished second, as she was deemed to have caused an early crash.

Then, two days later, she was eliminated in the qualifiers of the 1500m when she was adjudged to have failed to cross the official line marked in the ice. She was wide by 1cm.

An understandably emotional television interview followed in which a devastated Christie mentioned that she had also been the target of abuse from internet trolls.

Many of her abusers were Korean followers of Park Seung-hi who had been one of the skaters caught up in the early chaos in the 500m final.

But, with all of that now consigned to the past, Christie is back for a third Olympics at the age of just 27.

The Nottingham-based Scot is part of a five-strong short-track speed-skating squad - and happily, in the intervening period in South Korea, she has gone from receiving death threats to giving out autographs.

Hopefully, in the days to come, her remarkable redemption story will be completed in style - and in Korea itself.

In all, Team GB sent a total of 59 athletes to the Games in Pyeongchang so there is the exciting possibility that Britain may even break new ground.

Notably, Britain has never won a ski medal but freestyle skiers James Woods and Izzy Atkin could make history in slopestyle.

Slalom specialist Dave Ryding finished second in the Kitzbuhel World Cup last year and has recorded top 10 results this season - while, in cross-country skiing, Andrew Musgrave just missed out on a medal at the World Championships.

Snowboarding makes its debut as an Olympic sport at these Games - but already Britain's best hope has been dashed with Katie Ormerod unable to compete after fracturing her heel in practice.

It is a heart-breaking injury for the 20-year-old especially with it coming merely hours before the official opening of the 23rd edition of the Winter Olympiad.

Yes, it really is that close now - a fact which will no doubt gladden the hearts of the the organisers of the Games for whom the build-up has been unsurprisingly difficult.

Even the weather gods have not been particularly kind. Pyeongchang is set to be the coldest Olympics on record with wind chill temperatures in the mountains making it feel as chilly as -25C.

Indeed, there are genuine fears that it might even be too cold to snow - although organisers are prepared with snow guns which can produce the white stuff artificially albeit at a total cost of £4.4m.

Perhaps inevitably, sports and politics have also mixed - and the prelude to the Games has been dominated by the decision of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to ban the Russia team.

The ban followed an investigation into state-sponsored doping at their home Games in Sochi in 2014. However, the IOC subsequently invited 169 "clean" Russians to compete as independent athletes.

A further 47 athletes and coaches are also still hoping to compete if they win the appeals which they have made to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (Cas).

But the decision is not expected until 2am British-time - only nine hours before the opening ceremony tomorrow - and the whole thing has become a bit of a farce which surely should have been sorted by now.

Separately, there is the rather awkward fact that, technically at least, South Korea is still at war with its neighbours North Korea.

Only a truce stopped the fighting in the Korean War in 1953, rather than a peace agreement, and the tension between them became further heightened during the course of 2017.

In early September, North Korea really ramped up its aggression by conducting its sixth nuclear weapons test to the dismay of the international community at large.

United States president Donald Trump responded by threatening to “totally destroy” North Korea in his first address to the United Nations.

But, thankfully, the rhetoric since the New Year seems to have cooled somewhat.

In a surprise move, North Korea has agreed to send a team to compete, something which it pointedly refused to do for the 1988 Summer Olympics which were held in the South Korean capital Seoul.

Indeed, the two nations will march together at the opening ceremony under a unified flag and will even field a unified women's ice hockey team at the Games.

President of the IOC Thomas Bach described the agreement as "a milestone in a long journey".

He added: "The Olympic spirit is about respect, dialogue and understanding. The Winter Games [in] Pyeongchang are hopefully opening the door to a brighter future on the Korean peninsula, and inviting the world to join in a celebration of hope."

Raise a glass to diplomacy then - it appears, in this regard, as if it has achieved the necessary.

Now, though, it really is time for the talking to stop - and for the Games to begin!

Coverage can be found across the BBC (and Eurosport) with a nightly hour-long highlights show showing the best bits on BBC Two every evening at 7pm

TEAM GB  

2018 WINTER OLYMPICS

PYEONGCHANG

CURLING
Team Smith Kyle Smith, Thomas Muirhead, Kyle Waddell, Cameron Smith, Glen Muirhead

			Score
14-Feb	00:05	SWITZERLAND	W6-5 OT
14-Feb	11:05	CANADA	L4-6
15-Feb	05:05	JAPAN	W6-5
16-Feb	11:05	SWEDEN	L6-8
17-Feb	05:05	SOUTH KOREA	L5-11
18-Feb	11:05	ITALY	W7-6 OT
19-Feb	05:05	DENMARK	W7-6
20-Feb	00:05	NORWAY	W10-3
21-Feb	05:05	UNITED STATES	L4-10
22-Feb	00:05	PLAY-OFF: SWITZERLAND	L5-9

Team Muirhead Eve Muirhead, Anna Sloan, Vicki Adams, Lauren Gray, Kelly Schafer

			Score
14-Feb	05:05	OLYMPIC ATHLETES RUSSIA	W10-3
15-Feb	00:05	UNITED STATES	L4-7
15-Feb	11:05	CHINA	W8-7 OT
17-Feb	00:05	DENMARK	W7-6
17-Feb	11:05	SOUTH KOREA	L4-7
18-Feb	05:05	SWEDEN	L6-8 OT
19-Feb	11:05	SWITZERLAND	W8-7
20-Feb	05:05	JAPAN	W8-6
21-Feb	00:05	CANADA	W6-5
23-Feb	11:05	SEMI FINAL: SWEDEN	L5-10
24-Feb	11:05	BRONZE MATCH: JAPAN	L3-5

  

ALPINE SKIING
Dave Ryding	Men's slalom	1:40.16 (9th)
Laurie Taylor	Men's slalom	1:43.41 (26th)
Charlie Guest	Women's slalom	1:48.26 (33rd)
Alex Tilley	Women's slalom Women's giant slalom	DNF DNF
Dave Ryding Laurie Taylor Charlie Guest Alex Tilley	Mixed team event	beat United States in R16 lost to Norway in QF (5th)
BIATHLON
Amanda Lightfoot	Women's sprint Women's individual	24:15.3 (67th) 49:14.7 (73rd)
BOBSLEIGH
Brad Hall Joel Fearon	Two-man	3:18.34 (12th)
Brad Hall Greg Cackett Joel Fearon Nick Gleeson	Four-man	3:18.26 (17th)
Lamin Deen Andrew Matthews Toby Olubi Ben Simons	Four-man	3:18.29 (18th)
Mica McNeill Mica Moore	Two-woman	3:24.07 (8th)
CROSS-COUNTRY SKIING
Andrew Musgrave	Men's 15km freestyle Men's 30km skiathlon Men's 50km mass start	35:51.0 (28th) 1:16:45.7 (7th) 2:20:57.9 (37th)
Callum Smith	Men's 15km freestyle Men's 30km skiathlon	38:20.9 (75th) 1:23:49.9 (57th)
Andrew Young	Men's 15km freestyle Men's sprint	37:13.1 (57th) 3:21.50 (45th)
Andrew Musgrave Andrew Young	Men's team sprint	16:30.62 (15th)
Annika Taylor	Women's 10km freestyle Women's 15km skiathlon	30:52.9 (75th) 48:09.1 (60th)
FIGURE SKATING
Nick Buckland Penny Coomes	Ice dancing	170.32 (11th)
FREESTYLE SKIING
Lloyd Wallace	Men's aerials	100.03 (14th)
Murray Buchan	Men's halfpipe	66.00 (14th)
Alexander Glavatsky-Yeadon	Men's halfpipe	15.00 (26th)
Peter Speight	Men's halfpipe	64.60 (15th)
Rowan Cheshire	Women's halfpipe	75.40 (7th)
Molly Summerhayes	Women's halfpipe	66.00 (17th)
Emily Sarsfield	Women's ski cross	lost in QF
Tyler Harding	Men's slopestyle	21.00 (29th)
James Woods	Men's slopestyle	91.00 (4th)
Isabel Atkin	Women's slopestyle	84.60 (3rd)
Katie Summerhayes	Women's slopestyle	71.40 (7th)
LUGE
Adam Rosen Rupert Staudinger	Men's singles Men's singles	2:25.167 (22nd) 2:27.842 (33rd)
SHORT TRACK SPEED SKATING
Joshua Cheetham	Men's 1000m	1:26.223 (Heats)
Farrell Treacy	Men's 1000m Men's 1500m	1:25.080 (QF) DNF (Heats)
Elise Christie	Women's 500m Women's 1000m Women's 1500m	1:23.063 (4th) PEN (Heats) PEN (SF)
Charlotte Gilmartin	Women's 500m Women's 1000m Women's 1500m	PEN (Heats) 1:32.899 (Heats) 3:00.691 (SF)
Kathryn Thomson	Women's 500m Women's 1000m Women's 1500m	1:08.896 (Heats) 1:32.150 (Heats) 2:32.891 (Heats)
SKELETON
Dominic Parsons	Men's event	3:22.20 (3rd)
Jerry Rice	Men's event	3:24.24 (10th)
Laura Deas	Women's event	3:27.90 (3rd)
Lizzy Yarnold	Women's event	3:27.28 (1st)
SNOWBOARDING
Rowan Coultas	Men's big air Men's slopestyle	84.50 (8th) 23.58 (18th)
Billy Morgan	Men's big air Men's slopestyle	168.00 (3rd) 56.40 (10th)
Jamie Nicholls	Men's big air Men's slopestyle	81.25 (11th) 71.56 (8th)
Aimee Fuller	Women's big air Women's slopestyle	25.00 (25th) 41.43 (17th)
Zoe Gillings-Brier	Women's snowboard-x	lost in QF