2018 Winter Olympics thread

[irani8perspolis]

Forough Abbasi will be racing in the Women's slalom later today. Best of luck to her.

[irani8perspolis]

Hell yeah, snowboarding's really fun. I'm on my university's ski & board team and we compete against fast racers from all around the US, some of which are Iranian-Armenians. If Iran were to snatch up these athletes from all around the world like the hockey team, we'd have a decent showing at the Winter Olympics in the years to come.

I did a little bit of research and its really disheartening to see how much we are under performing at the Winter Olympics. We should at least grab a few medals. Compare us with a country like Slovenia (who won 8 medals at the last Olympics). We have almost DOUBLE the amount of ski resorts they have, they have 17 while Iran has around 30.

The problem in Iran is, poor ski federation, not enough standard coaches, and the vast majority of ski resorts don't meet international standards (I think Dizin and Darbandsar are the only ones). It's not like skiing is unpopular in Iran, if you guys go to any of the mountains around Tehran in the winter you will find them packed heavily on the weekends.

[Bessos]

^ We need academies, or at least send our athletes to academies abroad

and... MANAGEMENT (this needs no introduction)

[irani8perspolis]

Forough Abbasi just finished her first run with a time of 1:02.56. After the first run she is 55th out of 78 athletes.

[Rooyintan]

It is such a shame that Iran only has Skiers. Why can't EYE-RANians get trained for Snowboarding, Speed Skating, Luge and Curling.

Damn the TV stations in where I live are not showing curling. I miss watching it. Great sport moping the floor. Iran just needs to finds some of the country's best cleaners and train them on ice rink that's all

[Paradigm]

Read about Iran's flag bearer at the 2018 Olympics: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inp...102412038.html -- She started to ski in 2008 (at age 16). Trained in Armenia and Turkey due to a lack of proper facilities domestically.

Have you noticed that UK and Denmark, two rich European countries, don't do well in the winter games? Frankly I think it is more about culture and tradition than anything else. For example speed skating or curling can be done with low budgets.

[irani8perspolis]

Forough Abbasi just finished her first run with a time of 1:02.56. After the first run she is 55th out of 78 athletes.

She finished her second run with a time of 1:01.50 (total run time of 2:04.06) and finished 49th overall (25.43 seconds back of the winner). Great result for her to get into the top 50, she improved a lot from Sochi 2014, where she finished 51.15 seconds back of the winner.

[DRCha]

Of course. Literally all winter-sports are for rich people.
I went on a cheap student snowboarding trip to the french alps for 5 days and it cost me over 1k!

I can imagine the French Alps being expensive. I don't live too far away from the ski slopes, fortunately. Snowboarding is cheap for me. The company that I used to work for was located near a ski slope. I used to snowboard every night during winter with my co-workers.

[irani8perspolis]

Now Mohammad Kiyadarbandsari is competing in the Men's giant slalom. He recored a time of 1:19.11 for his first run, which put him in 63rd place out of 100+ athletes. He will do this second and final run shortly.

[irani8perspolis]

Now Mohammad Kiyadarbandsari is competing in the Men's giant slalom. He recored a time of 1:19.11 for his first run, which put him in 63rd place out of 100+ athletes. He will do this second and final run shortly.

He finished 58th

[Paradigm]

I can imagine the French Alps being expensive. I don't live too far away from the ski slopes, fortunately. Snowboarding is cheap for me. The company that I used to work for was located near a ski slope. I used to snowboard every night during winter with my co-workers.

DrCha, how does the South Korean leadership convince its population that spending on the Olympics is a good thing? I know in many other first-world places there are deep adversities to commercial type of sports. For example in my city (San Diego) we lost our NFL team after 55 years because of dispute over funding (via raise of local taxes) for a new stadium. I am guessing in case of Korea, the entrepreneurial culture plays a big part. In California where I've been living for 25 years, there has been a big shift since 1980's towards left-leaning ideology, government dependency/nanny state, and hostility towards free market mechanisms or traditions.

[Payam_Ali]

Samaneh Beyrami Baher got last by a lot in her only event, the Cross-County Skiing individual sprint classic.
Results: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-...men%27s_sprint

[irani8perspolis]

Mohammad Kiadarbandsari is competing in the mens slalom right now. His first run was 55.66s, he is currently in 41st place after the first run.

[irani8perspolis]

Mohammad Kiadarbandsari is competing in the mens slalom right now. His first run was 55.66s, he is currently in 41st place after the first run.

He finished in 34th, great result for him. Our highest ever finish at a Winter Olympics event is 30th.

[DRCha]

DrCha, how does the South Korean leadership convince its population that spending on the Olympics is a good thing? I know in many other first-world places there are deep adversities to commercial type of sports. For example in my city (San Diego) we lost our NFL team after 55 years because of dispute over funding (via raise of local taxes) for a new stadium. I am guessing in case of Korea, the entrepreneurial culture plays a big part. In California where I've been living for 25 years, there has been a big shift since 1980's towards left-leaning ideology, government dependency/nanny state, and hostility towards free market mechanisms or traditions.

I'm aware of the issues in some of the cities outside of South Korea. I don't know how this Winter Olympics will turn out to be for the Koreans. The Koreans don't have negative feelings towards hosting sporting events because the past ones that their country hosted were beneficial overall. All of the 1988 Seoul Olympic stadiums are being used to the present days. After the World Cup stadium was built in Seoul, the Olympic soccer stadium is now used for concerts like these ones:

I myself went to some of the concerts that were held here. And I learned to scuba dive in the deep pool of one of the stadiums. Before the World Cup stadium was built, I went to the Olympic soccer stadium several times to watch the games.

Another positive is that the 1986 Seoul Asian Games and the 1988 Seoul Summer Olympics significantly improved the image of South Korea. South Korea before the Olympics was either unknown or the only thing known about Korea was the Korean War. The 1988 Olympics were kind of like branding for South Korea. The 1986 Seoul Asian Games and the 1988 Seoul Summer Olympics were held when South Korea's economy boomed, and it continued to grow after the Olympics.

And like you said, Korea's entrepreneurial culture played a big part. Also, the Korean conglomerates did a lot of the funding for the past sporting events in South Korea. They probably did for this Winter Olympics, too. The current government is actually left-leaning, though. I'm not sure how this will play out for South Korea in the near future, but I feel pessimistic about it. So far, this government has been hostile to the conglomerates. Many left-leaning people think that this is good for preventing corruption. From what I witnessed in South Korea's development and economic growth from the 1980s to the present day, I for one know how important the conglomerates are to the Korean economy. Left-leaning would be good if a government knows how to make it work. I'm worried about South Korea's current president. So far, he has shown to be naïve and blundered into problems economically and diplomatically.