While you were sleeping, the Beijing Winter Olympics came to a close. I’m wondering if most of you slept through all 17 days of it.
Why not? Most events ended at 4 a.m. and any primetime coverage went up against the Super Bowl as well as all our own local sports, such as UH volleyball and basketball and prep playoffs.
Well, I watched — in most instances because I had to in order to help plan our daily sections — and there were numerous highs and some lowest of lows, such as:
The Good
>> Ryan Shimabukuro. The Honolulu-born speedskating coach again showed his mettle by guiding speedskaters to new heights. He coached Erin Jackson, who became the first Black woman to win gold in speedskating. He’d done it before, guiding Shani Davis and Joey Cheek to gold medals.
>> Madison Chock. Chock and her partner, Evan Bates, helped the U.S. win a silver in the team figure skating competition. They finished fourth in the ice dancing competition. While born in California, Chock, according to one email, has relatives who live full-time in Hawaii going back four generations to the Big Island. Her grand uncle is Tai On Chock, who entered the Hawaii Golf Hall of Fame in 1991.
>> Every big air competitor. This was like watching skateboarding on steroids. The heights these athletes reach while twisting, turning and somersaulting like a platform diver or a gymnast, only doing it 40 feet in the air, was amazing. I don’t know how they practice these feats.
>> Nathan Chen. The 22-year-old Yale student erased the disappointment from 2018 to complete a remarkable journey. He recalled the long drives from Utah to the training base in Southern California, sleeping in the car and beginning his dream by using his sister’s skates. He became the first American figure skating champion since 2010 and capped one of the most dominating four-year runs in the sport’s history. “It means the world,” he said. “I’m just so happy.”
The Bad
>> TV ratings. According to reports, viewership for the start of NBC’s coverage of the Beijing Winter Olympics was down 55.3% from comparable coverage of the 2018 Pyeongchang Games, with the opening ceremony sinking to a record low. … Viewership was down 61.4% from the 27.837 million average for the 2018 opening ceremony. The first Thursday primetime coverage averaged 7.25 million viewers, marking the smallest primetime Olympic audience ever on the network. The previous low was 8.5 million for the final night of competition at last year’s Tokyo Summer Olympics.
The Games did get a boost from the Super Bowl, scoring its highest ratings at the time on NBC. The abbreviated primetime coverage averaged a 9.8 rating and a 21.2 million viewers immediately after the Super Bowl.
Oh, the Super Bowl drew 101.1 million viewers, 112.3 million if you counted people streaming the game.
The Brave
>> Mikaela Shiffrin. It was sad to see. Shiffrin, one of the faces of the Winter Olympics and a favorite to take home more medals, went an inexplicable 0-for-5 in individual events. She failed to finish three of her races in a span of 10 days in some of her best events.
Much like Simone Biles in the Summer Games, Shiffrin lost her way.
“I don’t really understand it and I’m not sure when I’m going to have much of an explanation,” she said in a Los Angeles Times article. “I can’t explain to you how frustrated I am to not know what I can learn from today.”
Yet, she stood there and gave an on-sight interview with NBC, bravely, elegantly and graciously.
“I feel like a joke. Maybe I made someone smile. I don’t know. … I don’t know if anybody has failed that hard with so many opportunities maybe in the history of the Olympics. But I’ll take it. It was a joke.”
The Superstar
>> Eileen Gu. Is Gu the chosen one or the entitled one? Maybe both. The 18-year-old American-born superstar who decided to ski for China was the most popular and polarizing athlete in these games.
She faced an army of critics for not skiing for the United States, saying she did it to inspire youngsters in her mother’s homeland.
“If people don’t believe me, if people don’t like me, then that’s their loss,” Gu said. “They’re never going to win the Olympics.”
A doctor I know who was raised in New Jersey but is Taiwanese and born in Japan wondered how can someone turn their back to a country “that has given you so much?”
Even Chinese citizens criticized Gu for receiving preferential treatment by being given freedom to use social media while in China. A competitor of Gu’s in the Big Air freestyle skiing competition also complained that Gu was allowed to practice on the course weeks in advance.
But there she was after every run, beaming that magnetic smile that helped her earn $15 million in endorsements as a 17-year-old.
The 5-foot-9 skier and model is bound for Stanford.
The Ugly
>> The ROC. The Russians were caught cheating again. No surprise there. But what the Russian Olympic Committee and other decision-makers did to Kamila Valieva should be considered child abuse.
They put the 15-year-old out there, all alone, facing the daggers of all Olympic athletes past and present after a positive test and carrying the weight of her country and the world. The burden was too much. The graceful Valieva uncharacteristically stumbled, fell and dropped to fourth, off the medium podium.
The raw emotion immediately afterward was difficult to watch, and only a person without a pulse would not have compassion for her.
Officials who allowed Valieva to skate were worried about her mental health if she wasn’t allowed to compete. They made it worse for her.
They destroyed her and flouted everything the Olympics are supposed to stand for as far as drug use and fair play.
If the International Olympic Committee or Court of Arbitration for Sport are so weak and lenient, then the U.S. shouldn’t ban any of their athletes and let the IOC or the CAS handle it, and mishandle it. Then maybe Sha’Carri Richardson would have been able to compete in the Tokyo Olympics. The 100-meter champion at the U.S. Olympic Trials and a medal favorite, Richardson was banned by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency after traces of marijuana were found in her system.
Reprehensible for the treatment of Valieva and ridiculous for the rulings by Olympic decision-makers.
