Dow keeps PyeongChang Olympics warm

Louis Vega, Olympic & Sports Solutions vice president at Dow Chemical, speaks during an interview with The Korea Times in Yangyang, Gangwon Province, on Feb. 13. / Courtesy of Dow Chemical

Chemical giant brings insulation, sealing technologies to control temperature of facilities

By Nam Hyun-woo

YANGYANG, Gangwon Province -- Sportsmanship is heating up the PyeongChang Olympics, but the weather in the alpine town is as cold as predicted, living up to the name of the coldest Winter Games.

Spectators, volunteer workers, organizers and journalists fear the biting wind. Even athletes are not happy with the frigid weather.

But unlike others, one Olympic participant welcomes this weather. He is Louis Vega, Olympic & Sports Solutions vice president at Dow Chemical, and the cold spell gives the company a chance to prove its technologies.

“It allows us to express our technologies,” Vega told The Korea Times in Yangyang, Gangwon Province, about 60 kilometers north of PyeongChang. “Expressing them under these conditions only helps our customer see them that much better.”

Vega visited Gangwon Province to promote Dow Chemical’s businesses and its worldwide partnership with the Olympics. Dow has been involved with the Olympic movement for four decades and joined the worldwide Olympic partnership program in 2010.

At the PyeongChang Games, Dow applied its insulation and sealing technologies to the Olympic Plaza, the International Broadcast Center and the Olympic Sliding Center.

According to the company, the Olympic Plaza’s walls and roofs are insulated by advanced panels, which are based on state-of-the-art technologies from Dow and Dow Corning.

“Simply put, it helps keep the hot air in and the cold air out or the reverse,” he said. “Our coatings and sealing are inexpensive and efficient ways of reducing your consumption of energy through cooling the area or heating it.”

Despite being a global chemical giant, Dow’s business portfolio is less known to consumers because it does not roll out end-products and its technologies can be explained only through difficult technical terms in most cases.

Vega agreed that technical terms proved difficult for customers, stakeholders and the public. He said that was why Dow’s partnership with the Olympic Games was important because the sports festival gave the company a chance to demonstrate its technology in simpler and intuitive ways.

“Another big outcome of our partnership with the Olympic movement is that it allows us to talk to consumers and stakeholders who don’t talk in terms we use,” he said.

Vegas said Dow’s technology was not limited to keeping a place warm, but cold too. At the Olympic Sliding Center, which hosted the luge, bobsled and skeleton races, Dow used a polyurethane spray foam to insulate the ice of the track, maintaining its temperature, quality and consistency.

Dow’s products were also applied to the walls and roofs of the International Broadcast Center to allow media workers to broadcast in a comfortable environment; and the mattresses in the Olympic Village to allow comfortable sleeping for the athletes, who sleep more than 10 hours a day in average.

The main Press Center and other modular houses at were also equipped with Dow panels, which the firm says allow easy installation, cost efficiency with shorter construction periods and reduced waste and use of wood-based materials.

Dow Corning sealant keeps the temperature of modular houses stable.

“We utilize the Olympics like a large trade show,” Vega said.

Another favorable moment for Vega came when Chris Mazdzer of the United States won silver in the men’s singles luge. Since 2011, Dow has been the official technical partner of the U.S. luge team, working with athletes and coaches to develop more tuned and precise sleds.

At the 2014 Sochi Winter Games, Erin Hamlin of the U.S. raced on a sled developed by Dow and the team won the country’s first singles medal, a bronze, in its Olympic history.

“It was one of the most perfect examples of us being able to express technology through sport,” Vega said of Mazdzer’s silver.

“What I was most excited about was it gets to tell people ‘Oh, I understand, your material science, chemistry and your engineering knowhow is what brought these together’ and now we can see not a we-hope-it-will-do but it being on display.”

He said the door of Dow’s sports partnership was always open to other sports, as long as it was a partnership request, not a sponsorship.

“Most people want to talk to me about writing a check -- sponsorship,” he said. “We’re not a sponsorship company. We’re a partnership company. The USA luge came to us, wanting to work on a problem set, not to write a check.

“We believe in a larger impact on helping the Olympic movement achieve its goals and ourselves to get to a broader audience of stakeholders, customers included, to understand what we are doing.”