Today, we are off to women's luge. For some reason, the PyeongChang organizers planned the majority of their events in the evening. This one starts at 7:30 PM at the Alpensia sliding center. Since this is going to be another late night, we get up around 9 AM and I work on the blog for a couple hours before it is time to go find something to eat.
We are lucky today and catch the bus to the train station instead of having to walk. Once there, we head for the Taste Local food court and discovered to our pleasure that the items for sale are changing day-to-day. I have a Bulgogi rice bowl - thinly cut strips of meat marinated in a soy-based marinade (along with some sugar, garlic, ginger and black pepper). Beth goes for grilled rice cakes on a stick.
We've got a least an hour to wait before our train ride to Jinbu. I manage to give away some of the 200 Olympic pins that I brought to give to people, but mostly we just watch some of the video from other events. One of the funny things about the Olympics is that the people who are physically present to see them know much less about what is going on than people viewing them on TV. Much of the Korean coverage seems to be replays of notable performances by Korean athletes.
We get to Jinbu and kill a little more time before catching the TS5 bus to the sliding center. When we get there, we discover that the Security checkpoint is not open yet. I give some of the volunteers pins and actually make one trade. I've noticed that a lot of the volunteers are now wearing Olympic pins on lanyards around their necks. This is a good sign that pin trading will be big by the end of the Games. Too bad that I will miss it! We end up waiting around in cold, windy conditions for about 40 minutes before we can get in.
Our normal strategy at sliding events is to climb up to the top of the course - most fans don't want to do that much work so I get less obstructions in my photos. Then we gradually work our way back down during the competition so that we end up at the bottom when the event ends. A sign indicates that the start grandstand is to our right. We've got standing room tickets but this should be in the right direction.
We have not walked too far before we come to a gate with a volunteer. She indicates that there is no standing beyond this point. This is a surprise since we've only gone past curve 16. Oh well, there is a concession stand close by so we decide to get dinner before the crowds show up. As usual, they don't have most of the hot items on the menu so we end up with a couple steamed buns with red bean filling and hot chocolates. There is a small grandstand right below the concession stand. We still have two hours before the event starts and there is no one sitting in this section so we figure that we can just sit and eat. Nope. As soon as we sit down, a volunteer comes over and tells us that we cannot eat in the seats. We finally end up using the counter of the western food concession stand (which isn't open yet) as a table and eat standing up. Then we go over to curve 16 to stake out a position.
We haven't stood their for more than a few minutes before an American woman asks Beth for directions. It turns out that American slider Erin Hamlin's mother was a nurse at the Syracuse high school that this woman attended and they have been family friends for a long time. Erin has announced that she will retire after this Olympics so her friend wanted to honor her career by attending the Olympics as part of an extended trip abroad. She has already been in Japan and after Korea will head to Europe for six months where she will travel from England across Europe to Russia. She says that after several weeks, it is nice to be able to speak with someone in English so she elects to watch with us.
While we are waiting, a woman in a Ukraine team jacket walks by on the path right next to the track. It is clear that she is one of the competitors. She looks at me and says nice pins, sorry that I don't have any to trade. We wish her good luck and she smiles as she heads up the track.
A few minutes later a photographer from Reuters hands me one of their pins and I trade with a couple women from the Austrian team. Good deal - I don't have to do anything except stand here! My streak continues when a woman on the German team also wants to trade. In the meantime, the crowds are starting to swell. Here is the view from curve 16:
I had thought that sliders would come from behind us and head left into the big Olympic curve at the top of the picture before going back uphill to the finish. So I was really surprised when the first forerunner went in the opposite direction! It is too late to do anything about it now, but maybe we need to go to the left when we are back in a few days for women's skeleton.
The start order for the 3rd round is from first to last (based on speed from the qualifying heat) so there are three German sliders (Natalie Geisenberger, Dajana Eitberger and Tatjana Heufner) in the first four sliders that we see. Only Alex Gough from Canada in 3rd and possibly Erin Hamlin in 5th stand in the way of a German sweep. This is a pretty normal situation as the Germans have dominated sliding events for a long time.
I was able to get a couple pictures like this one:
of American Summer Britcher, who set the track record in the 2nd round and moved from 15th place into 9th. Summer's 3rd run is not nearly as good, but she still manages to move into 8th place. But most of the pictures I took had people and/or cell phones in the picture like this one:
of Dajana Eitberger. Along the way, I managed to get a picture of the Ukrainian woman we talked to:
whose name is Olena Shkhumova as well as the third American slider Emily Sweeney:
The 3rd round goes pretty much according to expectations. Geisenberger and Huefner have the two fastest runs followed by a pair of Canadians, Gough and Kimberley McRae:
This moves Heufner into 2nd and Eitberger falls to 4th, but otherwise, the top 5 stay the same. There is a break after the 3rd run for the track workers to apply some water on the track and sweep away some snow. While they are doing that, I'm looking at my pictures and am vaguely dissatisfied. On the plus side, I can shoot at shutter speeds of less than 1000th of a second and get nice sharp images, but they all look like the slider is just nailed to the wall of this curve when in reality, they are going past us at 140 kph (85 mph). Normally, I'd try to slow down the shutter speed and try to pan along with the slider to try to keep them sharp but blur everything else, but I don't have enough space to do this without having most of the pictures obscured by the spectators crowded in next to us. Instead, here are two pictures taken within a few hundred milliseconds of each other:
During that time, Brooke Apshkrum has traveled perhaps 3 meters (10 feet). These women are really moving!
Nine sliders are eliminated after the 3rd round so only 20 sliders, from slowest to fastest, will compete in the 4th round. We are pretty cold after 5 hours in the cold and wind so we've decided that we will leave when they have a break for track maintenance after the first 10 sliders in the 4th round. Our plans change when the 7th slider, Emily Sweeney, first fishtails, then hits the roof of the track and falls straight down the wall of the curve and loses her sled. Medical people rush to her final location at the base of the 14th curve and we fear that she's been badly hurt. This results in a track hold while the medical personnel help Sweeney and the track workers get the track back in shape for the remaining 13 sliders. At this point we elect to head for the exit.
As in Biathlon, leaving early results in a much quicker trip home. Once home, we learn that Sweeney was able to walk away from the track and that the Germans Geisenberger and Eitberger went 1-2 followed by Gough from Canada. Hamlin, in her last race, finishes 6th.
This moves Heufner into 2nd and Eitberger falls to 4th, but otherwise, the top 5 stay the same. There is a break after the 3rd run for the track workers to apply some water on the track and sweep away some snow. While they are doing that, I'm looking at my pictures and am vaguely dissatisfied. On the plus side, I can shoot at shutter speeds of less than 1000th of a second and get nice sharp images, but they all look like the slider is just nailed to the wall of this curve when in reality, they are going past us at 140 kph (85 mph). Normally, I'd try to slow down the shutter speed and try to pan along with the slider to try to keep them sharp but blur everything else, but I don't have enough space to do this without having most of the pictures obscured by the spectators crowded in next to us. Instead, here are two pictures taken within a few hundred milliseconds of each other:
Nine sliders are eliminated after the 3rd round so only 20 sliders, from slowest to fastest, will compete in the 4th round. We are pretty cold after 5 hours in the cold and wind so we've decided that we will leave when they have a break for track maintenance after the first 10 sliders in the 4th round. Our plans change when the 7th slider, Emily Sweeney, first fishtails, then hits the roof of the track and falls straight down the wall of the curve and loses her sled. Medical people rush to her final location at the base of the 14th curve and we fear that she's been badly hurt. This results in a track hold while the medical personnel help Sweeney and the track workers get the track back in shape for the remaining 13 sliders. At this point we elect to head for the exit.
As in Biathlon, leaving early results in a much quicker trip home. Once home, we learn that Sweeney was able to walk away from the track and that the Germans Geisenberger and Eitberger went 1-2 followed by Gough from Canada. Hamlin, in her last race, finishes 6th.
Steps for the day: 11,176
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