Opening ceremony The
opening ceremony of the 2018 Winter Olympics was held at the
Pyeongchang Olympic Stadium on 9 February 2018. The US$100 million facility was only intended to be used for the opening and closing ceremonies of these Olympics and the subsequent
Paralympics; it was demolished following their conclusion.
Sports The 2018 Winter Olympics featured 102 medal events over 15 disciplines in 7 sports, making it the first Winter Olympics to surpass 100 medal events. Six new events in existing sports were introduced to the Winter Olympic program in Pyeongchang: men's and ladies'
big air snowboarding,
mixed doubles curling, men's and ladies' mass start speed skating, and mixed team alpine skiing.
Numbers in parentheses indicate the number of medal events contested in each separate discipline. Participating National Olympic Committees A record total of 93 teams qualified at least one athlete to compete in the Games. The number of athletes who qualified per country is listed in the table below (number of athletes shown in parentheses). Six nations made their Winter Olympics debuts: Ecuador, Eritrea, Kosovo, Malaysia, Nigeria and Singapore. Athletes from three further countries – the Cayman Islands, Dominica, and Peru – qualified to compete, but all three National Olympic Committees returned the quota spots back to the
International Ski Federation (FIS). Under a historic agreement facilitated by the IOC, qualified athletes from
North Korea were allowed to cross the
Korean Demilitarized Zone into South Korea to compete in the Games. The two nations marched together under the
Korean Unification Flag during the opening ceremony. A
unified Korean team, consisting of 12 players from North Korea and 23 from South Korea, competed in the
women's ice hockey tournament under a special IOC country code designation (COR) following talks in
Panmunjom on 17 January 2018. On 5 December 2017, the IOC announced that the
Russian Olympic Committee had been suspended due to the
Russian doping scandal and the investigation into the
2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Individual Russian athletes, who qualified and could demonstrate they had complied with the IOC's doping regulations, were given the option to compete at the 2018 Games as "
Olympic Athletes from Russia" (OAR) under the
Olympic flag and with the
Olympic anthem played at any ceremony.
Number of athletes by National Olympic Committee Apart from the respective delegations, North Korea and South Korea formed a
unified Korean women's ice hockey team. Russian athletes were entitled to participate as
Olympic Athletes from Russia (OAR) if individually cleared by the IOC.
Event scheduling The IOC has allowed
NBC to influence the Olympic event scheduling to maximise U.S. television ratings when possible, due to the substantial fees paid by NBC for rights to the Olympics (which have been extended through 2032 with a nearly $8 billion agreement), the company being one of IOC's major sources of revenue. As
figure skating is one of the most popular Winter Olympic sports among U.S. viewers, the
figure skating events were scheduled with morning start times to accommodate
primetime broadcasts in the
Americas. This scheduling practice affected the events themselves, including skaters having to adjust to the modified schedule, as well as attendance levels at the sessions. Conversely, and somewhat controversially, eight of the eleven biathlon events were scheduled at night, making it necessary for competitors to ski and shoot under floodlights, with colder temperatures and blustery winds.
Calendar :
All dates are KST (UTC+9) Medals used in the games Podium sweeps Three
podium sweeps were recorded during the Games.
Records •
Noriaki Kasai of Japan became the first athlete in history to participate in eight Winter Olympics when he took part in the ski jumping qualification the day before the opening of the Games. The previous record of seven Winter Olympics was held by Russian luger
Albert Demchenko. • Japanese athlete
Yuzuru Hanyu became the fourth male figure skater (after
Gillis Grafström,
Karl Schäfer, and
Dick Button) to win two consecutive Olympic gold medals. • American
Nathan Chen became the first figure skater to land five
quadruple jumps in one program. • German figure skaters
Aliona Savchenko and
Bruno Massot set a new
ISU best free skating score of 159.31 in
pair skating. • Canadian figure skaters Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir became the most decorated figure skaters in Olympic history with a total of 5 medals. • Canadian figure skaters
Tessa Virtue and
Scott Moir set a new
ISU best short dance score of 83.67 and a new
ISU best combined total score of 206.07 in
ice dance. French ice dancers
Gabriella Papadakis and
Guillaume Cizeron set a new
ISU best free dance score of 123.35. • Russian figure skater
Alina Zagitova set a new
ISU best short program score of 82.92 in
Ladies' single skating. • Dutch speed skater
Sven Kramer won gold in the men's 5000 m event, becoming the only male speed skater to win
the same Olympic event three times. He was also the first man to win a total of
eight Olympic medals in speed skating. • Dutch speed skater
Ireen Wüst won an individual gold medal for the fourth Olympics in a row, the first time this had been achieved by a Winter Olympian. She also became the first speed skater (male or female) to win
ten Winter Olympic medals and the first female Winter Olympian to win
nine individual medals. • Chinese short track speed skater
Wu Dajing beat the
men's 500 m world record twice en route to winning a gold medal, becoming only the second person in history to skate the discipline in under 40 seconds (after American
J. R. Celski), and the first to achieve this at "sea level". • Dutch athlete
Jorien ter Mors became the first female athlete to win Olympic medals in
two different sports at a single Winter Games; she won a speed skating gold medal in the
1000 m and she was also part of the Dutch short track team that won bronze in the
3000 m relay. •
Ester Ledecká of the Czech Republic won gold in the
super-G skiing event and another gold in the
snowboarding parallel giant slalom, making her the first female athlete to win Olympic gold medals in
two different sports at a single Winter Games. • Norwegian cross-country skier
Marit Bjørgen won bronze in the
women's team sprint and gold in the
30 km classical event, bringing her total Olympic medal haul to fifteen, the
most won by any athlete (male or female) in Winter Olympics history. The record was previously held by fellow Norwegian athlete
Ole Einar Bjørndalen who has thirteen Olympic medals. • Germany and Canada tied for gold in the two-man bobsleigh event, only the
second time in history that two countries had tied for a gold medal in this particular event, the first time being in the
1998 Winter Olympics twenty years earlier. • Norway won a total of 39 medals, setting a new record for the highest number of medals won at a single Winter Olympics. Their 39th medal was the last gold medal won by cross-country skier Marit Bjørgen in the 30 km classical event. The record was previously held by the USA who won 37 medals in
Vancouver 2010.
Closing ceremony The
closing ceremony of the 2018 Winter Olympics was held at the
Pyeongchang Olympic Stadium on 25 February 2018.
IOC president Thomas Bach declared the Games closed, and the cauldron was extinguished. The Olympic flag was handed to
Beijing, the
next host city of the Winter Olympics. ==Medal table==