Harsh weather postpones several events at PyeongChang
Olympic officials realigning the slopes after the women’s alpine slalom event was rescheduled due to strong winds at YongPyong Alpine Center in PyeongChang Wednesday. Yonhap
By Kim Hyun-bin
Six days into the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics the biggest problem so far has been the harsh weather.
The bitter cold and strong winds affected the opening ceremony and impacted key events which have kept the Olympic Committee on their toes in rescheduling events due to fierce winds that gusted as high as 64 kilometers per hour.
The PyeongChang Winter Olympics Committee had to reschedule the women’s alpine slalom event due to bad weather.
The event was scheduled to take place at 10:15 a.m. Wednesday at YongPyong Alpine Center in PyeongChang.
At first the International Ski Federation said the event was delayed by an hour and a half, but later rescheduled the event to Friday due to the continuous strong winds.
This marks the third time the organizing committee rescheduled an alpine skiing competition due to weather.
The men’s downhill event and the super giant slalom were pushed to Sunday and Friday respectively from earlier this week.
The women’s giant slalom event has been postponed from Monday to Thursday as well.
Multiple training days have also been cancelled.
The International Ski Federation was under scrutiny for going ahead with the women’s snowboard slopestyle finals on Monday, knowing the weather conditions were not up to par.
“(The FIS) was aware that the weather conditions for the womens’ slopestyle competition were challenging for the competitors. The first priority for the FIS is the safety of the athletes and FIS would never stage a competition if this could not be assured,” said the FIS.
However, only nine out of 50 competitors who attempted runs at Pheonix Snow Park completed the course without crashing. Skiers were blown into mid-air making it difficult to land in their intended landing zones.
Another storm system is scheduled to pass through this weekend with stronger winds and is predicted to last until early next week.