Winter Olympics 2018 South Korea

Zahava Eckman,Tamar Fachler, Libi Fischman, Limor Patley and Adira Marcus

South Korea has participated in every Winter Olympics. They did not get any medals in the first years of the Olympics (1948-1988) but otherwise they got a total of 50 medals. The highest amount of medals they got in a year were 14 (6 gold, 6 silver, 2 bronze). This is the first time South Korea is hosting the Winter Olympics. South Korea also hosted the Summer Olympics in the year 1988.
In the 2018 Olympic Games there are 122 competitors from  South Korea. They will be competing as the host nation. The South  Koreans are competing in alpine skiing, biathlon, bobsleigh, cross -country skiing, curling, figure skating, freestyle skiing, ice hockey, luge, nordic combined, short track speed skating, skeleton, ski jumping, snowboard and speed skating. Most of them are competing in ice hockey.  Few are competing in Nordic combined.
One of the sports South Korea is competing in is ice hockey. Ice hockey is a team sport played on ice, usually in a rink.  They are two teams of skaters each player uses a stick to shoot a rubber puck into their opponent’s net to score points. The sport is known to be fast and physical. Teams usually consist six players, one goaltender and five skaters that skate up and down the ice trying to take the puck and score goals.
Matt Dalton was born July 4, 1986. He began playing ice hockey while he was in college.  Matt Dalton is playing for the national men’s ice hockey team. He is now 31 years old and the goalkeeper for the South Korean team. Matt Dalton has won many awards during his career including best goalkeeper and Asia League Champion.

Bobsleigh
Curling
Speed skating
Snowboarding
Short track speed skating
Skeleton
Silver – four- man Men
Silver – curling women
Gold – Seung-Hoon Lee – Mass Start Men
Silver – sang-ho Lee – Giant parallel Slalom men
Gold – 3000m Relay Women
Gold – Yan sungbin – Individual men
Silver – Kim Bo-Reum – mass start women
Gold – Choi Min-Jeong – 1500m women
Silver – Team pursuit Men
Gold – Lim Hyo-Jun – 1500m men
Silver – Cha Min-Kyu – 500m men
Silver – Hwang Dae-Heon – 500m men
Silver – Lee sang-hwa – 500m women
Bronze – Lim Hyo-Jun – 500m men
Bronze – Kim tae- yun – 1000m men
Bronze – Seo Yi-Ra – 1000m men
Bronze – Kim Min-seok – 1500m men

England In The 2018 Winter Olympics

Maayan Weinberg, Michal Balsam, Nili Bak ,Vardiya Ostroff

In the 1936 Olympics, Britain won medals across bobsleigh, figure skating and gold in ice hockey. When the Winter Olympics returned after World War Two, it saw the rise of one of the most successful British Winter Olympians. Jeannette Altwegg won bronze in figure skating in the 1948 Olympics in St Moritz and went on to win gold in the following 1952 Games.

This marked a break in British Winter Olympic medals for quite some time. Only one medal was won by Britain for 25 years, and that was in the 1964 Games in Innsbruck.  Britain entered a period of huge success in the 1970’s and 1980’s, winning  gold medal one after the other at several Olympics. In 1984, Torvill and Dean won gold for their iconic ice dance to Bolero, achieving the highest score for a single routine. In 1994, they would go on to win a bronze medal.

Britain were revitalized in 2002, when skeleton was reintroduced to the Salt Lake City Olympics. Alex Coomber won a bronze medal, followed by Shelley Rudman’s silver in Turin (2006), and gold medals for both Amy Williams in Vancouver (2010) and Lizzie Yarnold in Sochi (2014). Meanwhile, Britain was seeing similar success in curling, with a gold medal in 2002 for the women’s team, and silver and bronze for the men’s and women’s teams respectively in 2014.

Great Britain has sent 59 athletes to the 2018 Winter Olympics but only 58 of them are competing (34 men and 24 women).  Britain is competing in the following event’s : alpine skiing, biathlon, bobsleigh, cross-country skiing, curling, figure skating, freestyle skiing, luge, short track, speed skating, skeleton and snowboarding.  Elise Christie set a new record in short track speed skating women’s  500 meters. Andrew Musgrave’s won seventh place in the men’s 30 Km skiathlon.

Great Britain has sent 59 athletes to the 2018 Winter Olympics but only 58 of them are competing (34 men and 24 women).

One of the sports that Great  Britain is competing in during the 2018 Olympics is cross country skiing. The gruelling sport involves racing over terrain along a series of prepared tracks. Skiers set off at intervals and race against the clock rather than against each other. There are two styles of cross country skiing: classic and freestyle. The British have a very strong cross country team, particularly in the freestyle events. The British team’s biggest star, Andrew Musgrave has unfortunately not done well yet and came in 28th place in the 15km freestyle.  

Andrew Musgrave is 27 years old he was born in Dorset ,England. He originally started competing as an alpine skier after his family moved to Alaska. When he was five,he switched to snowboarding and cross-country skiing. After moving to Aberdeenshire, when he was 11 years old, he started to focus on cross-country skiing on a much more serious basis. He is the younger brother of former cross-country skier Posy Musgrave. He also has an older sister named Heather, and an older brother called  Ben.

England won the most amount of medals in skeleton.

Canada

Dani Stein, Shira Wirtschafter, Kinneret Magnas, Ashira Green, Yael Edvi

Canada has competed at every Winter Olympic Games, and has won at least one medal each time. The country’s greatest performance was as host of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, where Canadian athletes won 26 medals (two more than the 24 they won in the previous Winter Olympics, in Turin, Italy) and set a new record for most gold medals won by a country in a single Winter Olympics with 14. Canada has hosted the Winter Games twice, in Calgary in 1988, and in Vancouver in 2010. In the past Winter Olympics, Canada has won 62 gold medals, 56 Silver medals, 52 Bronze metals and 170 in all, which leaves them with the 6th most medals out of all the countries.

Canada is sending 225 athletes to represent their country in the 2018 Winter Olympics. The number of women from Canada is 103 and the number of men is 122. The sports that the Canadian athletes are competing in are: alpine skiing, biathlon, bobsleigh, cross-country skiing, curling, figure skating, freestyle skiing, ice hockey, luge, short track speed skating, skeleton, ski jumping, snowboarding, and speed skating. Most Canadian athletes are competing in ice- hockey. The fewest Canadian athletes are competing in ski jumping.

Canada is competing in  figure skating.  Figure skating is ice skating in a dance like way.  A lot of people like to watch figure skating because the athletes are really talented and need to have a lot of balance.  In figure skating, the dancers  spin a lot and it’s really nice to see.

Tessa Virtue is the 2018 gold medalist Olympic champion together with partner Scot Moir in the team events.  Tessa Virtue and Scot Moir hold the world record score for the original dance, the short dance and overall score. They have the most medals of

all Olympic figure skaters of all time. They have skated together for over 20 years which makes them the longest standing ice dance team in Canadian history.

Finland with Winter Olympics

Aurianna Harris, Elisheva Deitcher, Temima Klein, Gila Hornstein

Finland first participated in the Olympic Games in 1908, and has sent athletes to compete in every Winter Olympic games. That year Finland didn’t win any gold or silver medals, but they won 3 bronze medals . Over the years they have won 10 gold medals, 8 silver medals and 4 bronze medals in ski jumping, their top winter olympic sport, 22 in total.

Finland is sending 106 athletes to the Pyeongchang Games. There are 64 men athletes and 42 women athletes. The largest number of athletes from Finland are part of the ice hockey teams, men and women. The second largest sport that has many athletes is the cross country skiing, which has 11 men athletes and 8 women athletes. There are no women athletes from Finland competing in the alpine skiing and nordic combined. There are no men athletes from Finland competing in the figure skating. The rest of the sports are biathlon, curling, freestyle skiing, ski jumping, snowboarding and speed skating.

One sport Finland is competing in is ski jumping. Ski jumping is a sport that includes a jumping ramp, a take-off table and a landing hill. Ski jumping is mostly designed for the winter but can also be performed in the summer using tracks made from porcelain and a slope covered in plastic combined with water. The contestants are judged according to the distance of the jump and the technique. Overall Finland has won a total of 22 medals in ski jumping throughout the winter olympics and it’s one of their leading sports.

Matti Nykänen was born on July 17th 1963. He was considered the greatest ski jumper of all time. He won 5 Winter Olympics medals, nine World Championship medals, the World Cup overall titles and the Four Hills Tournament. Nykänen is the only ski jumper in history that won all five of ski jumpings’ major events. He won a gold medal at the Winter Olympics, the ski jumping World Championships, the Ski Flying World Championships and more. His four World Cup titles is an all time record shared with Adam Małysz and Sara Takanashi.

1] BOBSLED

2] CROSS COUNTRY SKIING

3] CURLING

4] FIGURE SKATING

5] FREESTYLE SKIING

6] ICE HOCKEY

7] LONG TRACK SPEED SKATING

8] LUGE

9] NORDIC COMBINED

France

Ariella Friedman, Orly Maryles, Miki Segal, Shani Smilovitz

France has hosted the Winter Olympics three times:  in 1924,  in 1968, and in 1992. They have won 109 medals mostly in alpine skiing – 15 gold medals, 15 silver medals, and 15 bronze medals all in alpine skiing. Other sports that France are competing in are biathlon, snowboarding, figure skating, freestyle skating, nordic combined, cross country skiing, curling, bobsleigh, and  ski jumping.

This year 107 athletes are representing France, 63 men and 44 women are representing.    France is competing in: alpine skiing, biathlon, bobsleigh, cross country-skiing, figure skating, freestyle-skiing, nordic combined, short track speed skating, ski jumping, snowboarding, speed skating. The sport with the most representing is alpine skiing. The sport with the least representing is speed skating..

Figure Skating is one out of twentyone sports. There are eight competitors  that are competing in  figure skating. Four of the competitors are men and four are women. In figure skating there is is team skating and single skating. The most points France got in single was the women’s 169.92.

Vanessa James is a Figure Skater! She was born September 27 1987. She was born in Scarborough, Ontario, Canada. In 2010 Vanessa partnered with Morgan Cipres. So far this year James and Cipres did not get a medal!

Norway at the 2018 Winter Olympics

Tehilla Bruce, Shira, Aviva, Arielle and Yehudit

Norway competed in every winter Olympics since 1924 (except in 1940 and 1944 when the Olympics were cancelled.) Norway hosted the games twice: in Oslo in 1952, and in Lillehammer in 1994. The sports it has done best at are cross-country skiing, speed skating, biathlon, alpine skiing, and ski jumping. All together, Norway has won 329 medals in the winter Olympics: 118 gold, 111 silver, and 100 bronze.

Norway has 109 athletes competing in the Pyeongchang Winter Olympic Games.  There are 82 men and 27 women competing in 11 sports.  Specifically, Alpine skiing (11), Biathlon (11), Cross-country skiing (20), Curling (7), Free style skiing (8), Ice hockey (25), Nordic combined (5), Skeleton (1), Ski jumping (7), Snow-boarding (5), and Speed skating (9).  Norway is confident heading into the games. They have declared hopes of winning 30 medals.

Freestyle skiing is one of the sports that Norway is competing in.  This includes lots of types of skiing. One of  the types is “aerial skiing”. Aerial skiing is where the athletes ski off a ski jump and then they spin and flip in the air. Another type of freestyle skiing is called “Acroski”. In Acroski they dance and make flips in the air and the athletes dance to music. Another type is called “slopestyle”. They need to go down a slope with lots of different bars and jump other them.

Johanne Killi is representing Norway in freestyle skiing in the the 2018 winter olympics. Johanne is 20 years old and has been skiing since age 10. She was born on October 13, 1997. She has competed in a lot of different competitions in Norway. She has won 1 gold metal, 1 silver, and 2 bronze between slopestyle and big air. She won the first big competition of the 2017/2018 season, the Dew Tour Breckenridge. Watching Johanne ski is very cool because she does a lot of cool tricks.

Norway  finished in 1st place with 39 medals!!!

USA in the 2018 Winter Olympics

Tami Gelband, Rosie Prais, Batsheva Korman,

U.S.A. has competed in 22 Winter Olympic Games. They have hosted 4 Winter Olympic Games. They have hosted in- New York 1932, California 1960, New York 1980, and Utah 2002. In the 4 times that U.S.A. has hosted the Winter Olympics, they have won 25 gold medals, 25 silver medals, 18 bronze medals, and in all 68 medals. Last Winter Olympics (2014) U.S.A was ranked in 3rd place with winning a total of 28 medals.

There are 241 US athletes participating in the 2018 Winter Olympic Games. They are competing in 15 different sport fields. The fields of sports they are competing in are; alpine skiing, biathlon, bobsled, cross country skiing, curling, figure skating, freestyle skiing, ice hockey, long track speed skating, luge, nordic combined, short track speed skating, skeleton, ski jumping and snowboarding. The athletes are from 31 different states in the US. The oldest athlete is Brian Gionta, he is 39 years old and is part of the ice hockey team. The youngest is Vincent Zhou, he is 17 and is a figure skater.

Speed skating is a competitive form of ice skating in which the competitors race each other by travelling a certain distance on skates. Types of speed skating are long track speed skating, short track speed skating, and marathon speed skating. In the Olympic Games, long-track speed skating is usually known as just “speed skating”.The standard rink for long track is 400 meters long.

Maame Biney is a USA Short Track speedskater. She started skating at the age of six. She was told that she was to fast to be a figure skater, so she switched to speedskating. She was born on 1/28/2000 and she lives in Reston, Va. Maame Biney also won the bronze medal in the 500-meters at the 2017 World Junior Short Track Speed Skating Championship, she won America’s SpeedSkating Short Track World Cup Qualifier and more. On December 16, 2017 she was qualified for the 2018 olympics by winning the 500-meters at the U.S olympic trials.