Game for 2

Gaurav Kanthwal

That do you get to see in the Winter Olympics? Hair-raising stuff by freak teenagers on snow-clad slopes, beautiful women pirouetting in skates, immaculately-dressed men showing their acrobatics inside the ice-skating rink, broken bones, some bruised egos too. It’s all happening at the Peongchang Winter Olympics, but there is something more in store.
Well, there are eight Olympic ice skating pairs, who are couples in real life too, with Team USA leading the chart. Figure skating and ice dancing (pairs) are the events in which one can see how couples strive to be perfect on the ice and off it too. Athleticism, artistry and emotional intelligence are synchronised to achieve perfection on the ice. Off it, they swear by one simple rule: never take your work home.
If there is emotional intelligence, there is artificial intelligence too at play at the Winter Olympics. Robots seem to have taken a fad for skiing too. Eight robotics teams from educational institutes and a private company competed for a $10,000 prize in the Ski Robot Challenge at the Welli Hilli ski resort. The competition was held to promote the host country’s (South Korea) robotic technology during the Winter Olympics.
Team USA’s figure skating pair of Alexa Scimeca Knierim and Chris Knierim got married in 2016 in a ceremony officiated by their coach Dalilah Sappenfield. Both would train alone earlier, but after marriage, their level has improved a lot. “We’ve been told that people have felt the emotions we’re trying to portray when we skate together,” said Chris.
The ice dancing pair of Team USA, Madison Chock and Evan Bates, has been skating and dating since school days in Michigan. Another pair, Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue, had skated and dated for two-and-a-half years but ultimately fell apart. They finally decided to keep their on-ice partnership going but have chosen other skaters for off-ice pairing.
Team Great Britain's ice dancing pair of Penny Coomes and Nic Buckland has been skating together since 2005 and says training is easy when you get along well. On the other hand, Team Italy's Anna Cappellini (ice dancing) and Ondrej Hotarek (figure skating) are both ice skaters but prefer to compete separately. “It’s best we do other things together rather than skating,” they say cheekily.
The figure skating pair of Evgenia Tarasove and Vladimir Morozov of Russia says it is hard to separate their work and private lives. It was something like that for Marie-Jade Lauriault and Roman Le Gac of Team France never wanted to date their partner on ice, but love overpowered in the end. Lauriault, born in Canada, even acquired French citizenship to compete with Roman. Love has meant shifting game for Team Austria's figure skating pair of Miriam Ziegler and Severin Kiefer. They two started out as solo skaters but have taken to pairs skating now.
Rivals
Snowboarders Jamie Anderson of USA and Tyler Nicholson of Canada met during a ski meet in Whistler, Canada, and hit it off instantly. Anderson won the gold in her event in Pyeonchang. The 27-year old blonde says of Nicholson, “We are actually rivals!”
Two timing
USA’s Edward Eagan is the only athlete to win a gold medal in both summer and winter Olympics in different sports. The US armyman won a gold in the light-heavyweight boxing in Antwerp in 1920. He was a member of USA's four-man bobsleigh team that claimed gold in Lake Placid in 1932. Japan’s Seiko Hashimoto holds the record for most appearances in both the summer and winter Olympics.

Snowboarder who struck
skiing women’s super-G gold
Czech Republic’s snowboarder Ester Ledecka shocked herself and the world with the gold medal in the Alpine skiing women’s super-G by clocking 1 minute and 21.11 seconds. She pipped defending champion Anna Veith (1:21.12s) of Austria by just one hundredth of a second. “I was wondering what just happened. Is this a kind of mistake?” she said. “I was thinking OK they’re going to change the time, I’m going to wait for a little bit and they’re going to switch and put some seconds on,” she added. The gold was destined to be hung around Ledecka’s neck as repeated weather disruptions meant that American Mikaela Shiffrin had to pull out of the Alpine skiing women’s super-G. Ledecka borrowed her skis for the run as she had not brought her own pair. The 22-year-old entered the post-event press conference with the ski-goggles on and said,“I was not prepared to be at this ceremony, and I don’t have any makeup.” World’s greatest skier, Lindsay Vonn, who finished sixth in the same race, said, “I wish I had as much athleticism as she has to hop from sport to sport and win everything. Unfortunately I’m only good at ski racing and she still beat me!”

Ski bots
It was an open challenge. Any robot more than 50cm in height, standing on two legs with joints resembling elbows and knees, having an independent power system and an ability to use skis and poles could participate in the Olympics. The robots were fitted with camera sensors to detect the blue and red flagpoles in their path and slalom down a beginner’s hill. Teams were awarded points for the number of flagpoles avoided and the fastest to the finish line was declared the winner.