From British speed skater Elise Christie to American prodigy Nathan Chen, via Nigeria’s unlikely bobsleigh team, a unified Korean women’s ice hockey side and moreFour years have passed since Elise Christie had an Olympic silver medal ripped from her in Sochi, and for far too many sleepless nights it remained an open sore. But three world titles last year finally extinguished that pain and the brilliant Scottish short-track speed skater goes into Pyeongchang with strong chances of a medal in the 500m and 1000m. Even a podium place in the 1500m may not be beyond her. Continue reading...
With UK Sport’s funding set to fall, we need an honest debate about which sports to fully support – and whether medals benefit the nationIt is a question that could soon sound as familiar as a BBC commentator getting overexcited about a potential curling medal. “Why spend a huge amount of money on winter sports,” asked the interrogator, “when we are not a winter sport nation?” Yet when it was uttered, at a press conference to announce Britain’s medal target of five in Pyeongchang, you could have heard a pin drop.That was because the person doing the asking was Katherine Grainger, the new chair of UK Sport, which supplies – and denies – funding to Olympic teams. And the organisation’s...
The Winter Games are rarely a hotbed of political intrigue. But these are strange times – and athletes want to make their voices heardWhen Lindsey Vonn looked toward the Pyeongchang Winter Games, which kick off in 30 days’ time, the Olympic gold-medalist seized the opportunity to slam Donald Trump: “I hope to represent the people of the United States, not the president.” She added: “I want to represent our country well. I don’t think that there are a lot of people currently in our government that do that.”In a country where unquestioning deference to the office of the presidency is a presumed duty of citizenship, this was a remarkable statement. But was it a clarion call for athletes to become...
The idea Kim Jong-un’s heart has been melted because North Korea has been permitted to send a figure skating pair across the DMZ to compete at the Winter Olympics feels a bit of a stretchFor an event that claims to exist in the rarefied air far above politics, it’s remarkable how often the Olympics is used as a political pawn. In recent years Beijing used the 2008 Games as a curtain raiser for their new era of global domination, while Vladimir Putin used the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi as the curtain-raiser for his invasion of the Crimea, among various other Corinthian enchantments.Every Games is a hotbed of political activity of varying sorts, with the VIP seats filled by power players...
The Winter Olympics, World Cup and Commonwealth Games will all have an unavoidable backdrop that reminds us that all international sport is politicalIn the winter of 1945, Dynamo Moscow came to Britain on a goodwill football tour that turned out to be anything but. They played Chelsea, Cardiff City, Arsenal and Rangers, the last two matches so rancorous they inspired George Orwell to write his famous essay The Sporting Spirit. The tour, Orwell wrote, had only created fresh animosity on both sides. “And how could it be otherwise?” he asked. “I’m always amazed when I hear people saying that sport creates goodwill between nations.” Sport, Orwell thought, had become “bound up with the rise of nationalism – that is, with...