Pyeongchang, South Korea • These gusts of polar winds aren’t taking the early portion of the 2018 Olympic Winter Games by storm. Nearly every morning is a gorgeous bluebird day. Clouds here are a rarity, although at times, light snowfall pepper the mountains.
These winds that you keep hearing about, which ping notifications of delays and eventually postponements to the phones of Olympic fanatics, are taking the first few days of these Games by hostage. It’s the not-hot topic at the moment. Steady and punishing, the winds have thrown one of the most popular portions of the Games into a blustery flux.
On Sunday, men’s downhill event was cancelled. It was so windy for much of the day, U.S. alpine head coach Sasha Rearick said, the gondolas weren’t shuttling skiers up the mountain at the Jeongseon Alpine Centre.
On Monday, the women’s giant slalom event was postponed two hours prior to the scheduled start, ensuring the 2018 debut of U.S. superstar Mikaela Shiffrin would wait until Thursday, the same day as the rescheduled men’s downhill.
“I think the challenge is the winds are consistent and they’re actually very forecastable, according to the people here,” said Rearick. “It’s not like in other parts of the world where wind can develop and die down and it’s harder to forecast, they for some reason here are able to forecast.”
The gusts have also forced several events into holding patterns.
Women’s snowboard slopestyle saw its qualifying round held before eventually the decision was made to push competition back a day and allow every snowboarder a shot at medaling in a two-run final Monday morning. An hour or so before, a break in the wind allowed 17-year-old Red Gerard to put down a gold-medal run in the men’s snowboard slopestyle. His first two runs, he said, were directly affected.
Another teen with gold-medal aspirations wasn’t as lucky. Australian snowboarder Tess Coady, 17, suffered a torn ACL on her final training run Sunday, thrown by a gust of wind on the final big jump before the event was delayed a day.
Tuning in from his home in the Salt Lake Valley, University of Utah professor Jim Steenburgh was in the middle of watching the men’s skiathlon on tape delay. Steenburgh has been a professor of atmospheric sciences for 22 years and was involved in observing and weather forecasting for the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. Last year, some Pyeongchang Olympic officials came to Utah to meet with him to discuss the 2018 Games.
The winter winds are not uncommon, Steenburgh said, and feature a title fitting for the sort of brutally-cold wind-chill factors athletes and spectators are dealing with.
“They call it the Asian Winter Monsoon,” he said.
South Korea is pelted with dry, stiff winds as a result of a northwesterly weather flow pattern that begins as far north as Siberia and sweeps a majority of its cold air that forms over the Korean Peninsula. Unfortunately for those who grew used to balmy Olympic Games in Vancouver and Sochi, this was a weather pattern that was in play from the first day.
“South Korea can be a pretty cold place in the winter time when the flow is coming off the Asian continent,” Steenburgh said. “You can’t do anything about the weather, except be prepared for it.”
Both Steenburgh and Rearick noted Korean weather officials have been spot-on in their assessments when it comes to forecasting winds. The rest of the week could potentially lead to more postponements. The alpine events will start to be stacked atop one another at the various venues. The outlook remains, well, breezy. Winds are expected to remain high until at least Wednesday.
After the men’s downhill event was cancelled Sunday, Rearick and his staff decided to utilize the delay as a day to turn the Olympians loose. No training obviously, so they chose to attend Olympic events and cheer on their fellow athletes. Some showed up at the same skiathlon that Steenburgh was tuned into back home in Utah.
Inside the neighboring Alpensia Ski Jumping Center, U.S. Nordic combined athletes Bryan and Taylor Fletcher waited nearly two hours to soar in their first training runs. The hill itself, Taylor Fletcher said, is protected well by the winds.
As for up top?
“You’ve got to hold onto your skis, otherwise they’re going to blow up in the air,” Taylor Fletcher said. “It takes a little nerve at first, because you’re like, ‘Oh man, I hope my screws are tight and everything.’”
One day earlier, American ski jumper Kevin Bickner finished 18th overall in the men’s normal hill medal round.
“The wind is insane being at the top, you can’t even stand up straight. It’s crazy,” he said. “That’s intimidating. Aside from that it makes it really hard, your muscles are tensing up, it’s hard to feel comfortable getting into a good positions.”
Earlier this week, Park City’s two-time gold medalist Ted Ligety wore a large piece of blue tape across his nose and cheeks. In giant white letters, it read “USA.” The tape is being used to battle the elements while alpine racers prep for what’s still ahead.
Yep, it’s cold here. These winds just add a piercingly-cold unpredictability to four year’s worth of work.
“My comment to people is this,” Steenburgh said. “It’s the Winter Olympics.”
