If your midterms kept you from watching the amazing athletic prowess of the Winter Olympics, it isn’t too late to catch up!  The Winter Olympics that lasted for two weeks finally came to an end on February 25th. Right from the start, the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics kept presenting us with excitements and surprises each day. We’ve been blessed to see so many insane performances and hilarious moments on and off the games. If you were too busy lately to catch up with the Olympics or don’t know where to begin watching, here are some of the highlights of the 2018 Winter Olympics that I enjoyed and would encourage you to watch, or maybe re-watch.
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Shaun White’s Epic Half-pipe Final Run.
Guess this one has been mentioned enough everywhere, but I’ll just remind you one more time. His first run was amazing, but the final run just topped everything I had ever seen in half-pipe. That one was epic, completely insane and NBC called it the “run of a lifetime” and I think I have to agree…. We are not only taking about 1440 but back-to-back 1440s. No wonder my best friend spent almost two hours consecutively watching this one single run.
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Chloe Kim and her Breakfast.
Another legendary performance in the history of snowboard half-pipe: Chloe Kim and her signature back-to-back 1080s. Although only 17, Chloe has been competing in many X Games and earned Gold several times. She is also the first woman ever to land a back-to-back 1080s and she did it two years ago at 15. Then, Chloe melted the internet with the overflow of cuteness of twitting about her unfinished breakfast sandwich and biting into the after-Gold surprise, two churro ice cream sandwiches.
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Aliona Savchenko and Bruno Massot’s Free Skate.
When Savchenko/Massot finished fourth in short program with their disappointing performance, I thought Aliona, the five-time Olympian, was about to go home again without the Gold. But they proved me wrong the next day with their record-breaking free skate of perfection. The choreography was stunning and they executed it with such speed and strength. That triple twist and those liftings, simply jaw-dropping. The moment after the skate was also full of emotions when the pair collapsed on the ice and cried. Just imagine how beautiful and sentimental it is for a woman who skated for 16 years in five Olympics to finally have her dream come true.
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Ester Ledecka Took the Gold by Accident?
This is perhaps the biggest surprise in the 2018 Winter Olympics, or perhaps the entire history of alpine skiing, EVER. The Czech Olympian, an Olympic Gold medalist in snowboarding, had never finished better than 19th in Super-G World Cup competitions before the Olympics, but somehow she was really feeling herself that day. She probably jumped down the hill thinking it would be one of the “I’ll just enjoy the process of the game” kind of run, but ended up beating the defending champion Anna Veith by 0.01 and stole the Gold. Her reactions after crossing the finish line are just priceless. She shocked the TV announcers, Veith, everyone watching the game, as well as herself. The whole thing just became more dramatic when she won another Gold in snowboarding several days later.
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Red Gerard, the Champion of all American Teenagers.
This is, in my opinion, the most hilarious moment in the 2018 Olympics. It’s normal for an American teenager to win Gold (I mean, we’ve seen a lot recently), but it’s another story for an American teenager who watched too much Netflix the night before, overslept in the morning, couldn’t find his own jacket, probably didn’t have time to fix his hair and only placed in the 11th before the final run to win Gold… Thanks to all the cans of beers consumed by his family, he nailed the final run and burst out “holy sh*t” on TV. If those are some classic spirits of modern American teenagers, he must be the champion of all.
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Tessa Virtue/Scott Moir’s Moulin Rouge.
Virtue/Moir’s final performance in the ice dance free dance marked a new world record in total score, and the first time I cried watching the Winter Olympics. The Moulin Rouge routine they performed in the Olympics was the hardest program ever in their 20 years skating together, and yet their finish was better than ever. It was absolutely beautiful, sensual and powerful. However, what made this dance so special is not their nearly perfect performance and score but the fact that it may very likely be their last dance in competitions. The 20 years of ups and downs, retirement and coming back is finally coming to an end, and that was what’s in my mind when they stepped onto the Olympic ice one last time. The French pair Papadakis/Cizeron just set the new world record in free dance with their “Moonlight Sonata”, the pressure was enormous for Virtue/Moir. Nevertheless, they did it. Two-time Olympic champion, three-time World champion, eight-time Canadian champion and the most decorated figure skaters in Olympic history, not a bad way to end their career.
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Picture sources:
http://www.eivnews.com/archives/6942
http://www.nbcolympics.com/news/who-is-chloe-kim-olympic-snowboarding-halfpipe-team-usa