Noriaki Kasai celebrates winning the silver medal Saturday after the ski jumping large hill final at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Krasnaya Polyana, Russia. | AP
Noriaki Kasai has qualified for the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics as a member of Japan’s ski jump team. And in one respect, no one has ever flown higher. Kasai will participate in his eighth Winter Olympic Games. No one has ever done that.
There are actually 11 other Olympians who have participated in 8 or more Olympics, but they all have been participants in Summer Olympic competitions like equestrian, sailing, canoeing, rowing and shooting events. Tied with him at 7 Winter Olympiads was Albert Demtschenko from Russia, who could have joined Kasai as an 8th straight winter Olympian, but was banned for life from the Olympics in December, 2017 for doping.
That’s what happens when you put skill and longevity together. “Legend,” as Kasai is called in Japan, has not only won 2 silver medals and a bronze medal in the Olympics, he has two Guinness World Records for appearances in international ski jump events.
Most interestingly, he has been immortalized in a song called “Mr. Noriaki Kasai,” by the Finnish punk rock band, the Van Dammes.
“I was going up and I remember seeing the wall come around…and I just kind of blanked.”
Of course he blanked. Shaun White‘s head, which was moving with considerable speed due to a complex high-speed aerial spin during a practice half-pipe showboarding session in October, smacked right into the lip of the wall. When White came tumbling down the wall, blood gushing from his face.
“I have never really had that much blood coming out of me before,” said White.
The two-time gold-medalist in the snowboard halfpipe from San Diego, California was in New Zealand to train in preparation of entering a fourth straight winter Olympics in PyeongChang when this accident happened, requiring 62 stitches to his face. But it took only a couple of months before White was back on the snow competing for Olympic qualification.
The footage of the accident was from an 8-part documentary called SnowPack: Shaun White and the U.S. Snowboard Team, which focuses on White’s journey to the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Games.
I enjoy talking to Olympians, people who have dedicated a good chunk of their lives to unlocking the secrets to even higher performance. The TeamUSA site published this article that shares the insight of American Olympians who have competed in multiple Winter Olympics or Paralympics. The way I would summarize their advice:
Learn from Experience and Your Mistakes
Sometimes Ignorance is Bliss
Don’t Let the Moment Define You
Learn from Experience and Your Mistakes
Successful athletes will often view failures and mistakes as positives. Thomas Edison famously responded that he never failed when developing the light bulb. “I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.”
Erin Hamlin is a three-time Olympian in the women’s luge at the 2006 Torino Olympics, 2010 Vancouver Olympics and, finally stepping up to the medal podium with a bronze medal at the Sochi Olympics had this to say about failure. “The more bad runs you have, the more ways you know how it didn’t work,” she said. “You can take that and figure out how to do it right.”
Ted Ligety, alpine skier
Sometimes Ignorance is Bliss
At some point, you can get too much advice on how to succeed at the Olympics, or in any high-pressure moment. Two-time gold medalist in alpine skiing, Ted Ligety, thinks that it’s important for people to not think too much, and trust in yourself and abilities may be the best advice for athletes stepping on the big stage for the first time.
“I wouldn’t have that much advice for myself,” said Ligety when asked what he would say to himself if he could go back to 2006. “Being a little naïve back then was a good thing.”
Don’t Let the Moment Define You
Oksana Masters
Oksana Masters is a summer and winter Paralympian in nordic skiing, rowing and cycling, and felt the pressure early in her career. “Oh my gosh, everyone single person is watching, and it’s the biggest race, and if you mess up, it’s over.” But her advice to others would be to just treat the big race as just another training session.
Kelly Clark is a four-time Olympian, who has won gold and two bronze medals in the halfpipe since the 2002 Salt Lake City Games, said that the competition in the Olympics is merely one moment in your long life. “We can get wrapped up in four years of intensity for 30 seconds [of performing on the Olympic stage], and we make it into something that defines us, we make it into a destination,” she said. “You don’t need to make it a destination or something where you need a T-shirt that says, ‘I survived the Olympic Games,’” she said. “Instead, think, ‘I got to do this wonderful sport.’”
Perhaps the most practical advice came from Masters about packing so much clothes for the Olympics. “You’ll never use them.”
I grew up on comic books, thrilled by the Marvel world of super heroes fighting evil in the universe while dealing with their own complications of making a living, family strife, and acne. The reason that Hollywood is enamored with the Marvel and DC universes is because of the powerful character development of superheroes who were learning as they went, uncovering personal flaws, while wisecracking and cracking heads.
But perhaps in my youth, I was overly forgiving.
I picked up a 1980 comic book because it was related to the Olympics – Marvel Treasury Edition #25, Spider-Man vs. The Hulk at the Winter Olympics.
And boy, it is bad. The illustrations are fine. The story is ridiculous. The writing is awful – way too much explanation.
According to this article, there was a time in the late 1970s and early 1980s when Marvel and DC were locked in a Cold War – Détente relationship. When DC put out a large-sized comic book called DC’s Limited Collector’s Edition, Marvel did the same with Marvel Treasury Edition. Measuring 10 inches by 14 inches, the Marvel Treasury Edition was significantly bigger than the standard 6.5 by 10 inch mag.
But Marvel featured primarily reprints. Inspired by the coming Winter Games in 1980, Marvel decided to use the Marvel Treasury format in issue #25, creating original content in commemoration of the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympics, complete with appearances by Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk. Despite the writing, and storyline, the art is still pretty cool.
I wonder if they were thinking to do one on the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics. I guess we’ll never know.
As soon as Jean-Claude Killy ended his run in the Alpine downhill competition at the 1968 Grenoble Winter Olympics, the first person to greet him was his mentor and friend, Michel Arpin. Arpin, who worked for ski manufacturer, Dynamic, adroitly hugged his friend, showing photographers his back pouch with the Dynamics logo.
A policeman, as instructed to do for all skiers, took Killy’s skis away in order to avoid the “unseemly” display of ski brands adorning an amateur Olympic champion. Arpin then, according to The Complete Book of the Winter Olympics, took one of his skis off and planted it in the snow so that photographers could capture Killy with the ski and the two yellow bars of the Dynamic brand.
Killy retired from competitive skiing not long after Grenoble, because he knew that it would be hard to sustain his World Cup skiing dominance and triple-gold medal Olympic achievement. He also knew that he had other worlds to conquer. He signed with sports management firm, International Management Group, and started his career representing such brands as American Express, Schwinn bicycles, United Airlines, Chevrolet, as well as Head, the ski equipment manufacturer which put Killy’s vaunted name on their newest fiberglass skis.
Jean-Claude Killy, from the tiny village of Val-d’Isere in the French Alps, was a super star, and was now getting paid enough to live the life of the jet set and do what he pleased. He married an actress, Danielle Gaubert. He competed as a race car driver. He acted in movies, and produced television programs. Eventually he moved into sports administration, joining the executive board of the Alpine Skiing Committee of the International Federating of Skiing (FIS), serving as co-president of the 1992 Albertville Winter Olympics, president of the Tour de France organization, as well as a member of the International Olympic Committee.
Famed gonzo journalist, Hunter S. Thompson, spent some time with Killy in the midst of his transformation from world-class skier to world-class pitchman, catching Killy in a burst of unsolicited honesty. “Before, I could only dream about these things,” said Killy. “When I was young I had nothing, I was poor. . . Now I can have anything I want!”
Killy indeed started from humble beginnings. But he felt he had earned his way to the top, focusing on all aspects of how to be the greatest skier of his time, and making the same effort to be the best in his part of the world of business. Thompson recognized that drive in Killy in his profile called “The Temptations of Jean-Claude Killy.” Thompson was following Killy during a marketing tour for Chevrolet, noting that Killy’s ability to draw you in was Gatsby-like, and was an ability that made him rich. But Thompson also admitted that Killy worked at his new profession, as much as he did in his previous one.
Jean-Claude, like Jay Gatsby, has “one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced — or seemed to face — the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.”
That description of Gatsby by Nick Carraway — of Scott, by Fitzgerald — might just as well be of J.-C. Killy, who also fits the rest of it: “Precisely at that point [Gatsby’s smile] vanished — and I was looking at an elegant young roughneck, whose elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd. . .”
The point is not to knock Killy’s English, which is far better than my French, but to emphasize his careful, finely coached choice of words. “He’s an amazing boy,” I was told later by Len Roller. “He works at this [selling Chevrolets] just as hard as he used to work at winning races. He attacks it with the same concentration you remember from watching him ski.”
Jean-Claude Killy, Guy Perillat 1 and 2 in the downhill at Grenoble
Jean-Claude Killy edged out his fellow Frenchman, Guy Perillat, by only 8 one hundreth of a second in the men’s downhill. In the second alpine event, the giant slalom, King Killy, as he had been called, won easily for his second gold event.
The big question remaining – could Killy match the accomplishments of the great Austrian, Toni Sailer, who won all three alpine events at the 1956 Cortina d’Ampezzo Winter Olympics. The answer was touch and go.
A few days after Killy won the giant slalom, the weather in the French Alps deteriorated. Visibility on the slopes was horrible due to shadows, fog and mist, which made it hard to see the gates that formed the route down the mountain. The visibility was so poor, some of the skiers pleaded with officials to postpone the slalom competition, to no avail.
There are two rounds of skiing in the slalom and Killy found favor with the Gods as the skies cleared during his first run, helping him secure a small lead with a time of 49.37 seconds. In the second round, Killy made it down the course without fault, with a slighly slower time of 50.36 seconds.
A threat to Killy’s gold medal trifecta, Norwegian, Hakon Mjoen, seemingly overtook Killy in his second run, only to be disqualified for missing two gates down the slope. There was only one more man who had a chance to beat Killy – the Austrian Karl Schranz. Silver medalist in the giant slalom at the 1964 Innsbruck Olympics, and World Cup Champion in 1969 and 1970, Schranz unfortunately found greater fame in this 1968 slalom event.Karl Schranz
Austrian skier Karl Schranz being congratulated by teammate Toni Sailer (left) and Frenchman Jean-Claude Killy after winning the Olympic slalom event here. Later came the sensational disqualification of Schranz by the judges for missing a gate.
As Schranz made his way down the slalom course, at the 21st gate, he had to stop, according to sports-reference.com. Schranz told officials that a man in black walked onto the course in his path, forcing him to stop. Upon hearing that explanation, officials allowed Schranz a do-over. Taking advantage, Shranz skied the course to perfection, generating the fastest combined times of the two rounds, and entered the post-race press conference as the proud winner of his first Olympic gold medal. Killy was the reluctant winner of the silver medal.
Two hours later, Schranz’s world was turned topsy turvy. It was announced that Schranz had missed gate #19 in the second round, two gates earlier than when the mystery man in black impeded Schranz’s progress. Since the infraction occurred prior to the distraction, officials declared Shranz disqualified, and Jean-Claude Killy the gold medalist.
Schranz claimed that if he did miss a gate or two it was because he had already been distracted by the sight of someone on the course. His supporters contended that the mystery man had been a French policeman or soldier who had purposely interfered with Schranz in order to insure Killy’s victory. The French, on the other hand, hinted that Schranz had made up the whole story after he had missed a gate.
In the end, a Jury of Appeal ruled against Schranz. The Austrian lost his gold, and Killy won his third gold of the Grenoble Winter Games, matching Sailer in 1956. As he was quoted in The Complete Book, Killy celebrated with the sustained intensity he brought to the slopes: “The party went on for two-and-a-half days, and the whole time I never saw the sun once.”
That was the response to a question during an interview with CNN in 2015. The interviewer wondered why one of the world’s most famous skiers had not been on the slopes since 1988, speculating that perhaps Jean-Claude Killy was either going to be great at what he did, or not do it all.
“It’s very difficult for a skier like me to go up and ski, just nicely, and not seeing my skiing what I would want it to be. I’m 100% always, on everything, yes.”
Killy is a one-time Olympian, but at his one appearance at the 1968 Grenoble Winter Olympics, the Frenchman swept the three alpine skiing events – the downhill, the grand slalom and the slalom, the only person other than Austrian great, Toni Sailer, to do so.
To reach such Olympian heights, Killy had to fall, many times. To Killy and his coach, falling meant he was pushing it. The head coach of the French ski team, Honore Bonnet, took in a 17-year-old Killy, a raw talent, but with tremendous potential, as he explained in this 1990 Sports Illustrated profile of Killy:
I took him on the team in 1960-61, and he never finished a race. He’d be ahead by two seconds halfway down, but he’d fall. I encouraged him. I told him that I selected people not by their finish but by their performance in the gates on the way down. I reminded him that, of course, if he wished ever to win he would have to arrange to also finish. But at the time I believed this young man had everything. Eventually I was proved right.
A year later, Bonnet saw evidence of this go-for-broke attitude in a race in Cortina, Italy. Even though Killy was only three weeks before his debut at the World Championships in Chamonix, France, he went “hell-bent” down the slopes, crashing in dramatic style about 180 meters from the finish, immediately getting up and crossing the finish line on one ski. He busted his leg, and missed the World Championships.
The 1964 Innsbruck Winter Games were Killy’s Olympic debut, and he was eligible for all three alpine events. He was actually a favorite in the Giant Slalom at the age of 20, but he lost a binding in that race, fell a the beginning of another, and never showed the promise his coach had seen.
But in 1967, it all came together.
Over the course of 1967, the year before the Grenoble Winter Olympics, Killy had become the most dominant downhill skier in the world. Inspired by the points system of Formula 1 motor racing, where drivers are rewarded for success over time, organizers created the World Cup season for skiing in 1967. And Killy took that first season by storm. Of the 17 world cup slalom, giant slalom and downhill races he competed in, Killy won 12. In all 1967 competitions he participated in, he finished as a top three finalist in 25 of 29 races, coming in first in 19 of those.
Said Killy in this SkiingHistory.org interview, “if the World Cup hadn’t been invented, my 1967 season might not have been what it was. It was a greater achievement than my 1968 gold-medal hat trick at the Grenoble Winter Olympics, for which most people remember me.”
And for good reason. He took the risk, to try new things to gain an edge, even if it meant experimenting in the midst of competition. Here’s how he won his first gold medal in Grenoble, as he explains it to Sports Illustrated:
My start was tremendous, and I took every risk I could find on the course. I also had a little secret I knew about the finish line. Early in the practice runs, I had realized that if I cut a sharp line just at the pole on the right, I could actually gain a couple of meters. I had never taken this line during practice, because I didn’t want anyone to know about it.
And according to the Chinese Zodiac, there are five different cycles of Dog Years. This year is the Earth Dog, which in theory, means that people born in 2018 (or 1958), are “communicative, serious, and responsible in work.”
With the coming 2018 PyeongChang Olympics, this is actually only the third time an Olympics will have been held in the Year of the Dog. Twelve years ago, the Olympics were held in Torino, Italy in 2007, and twenty-four years ago, the Winter Games were held in Lillehammer, Norway, in 1994 (Year of the Wood Dog). That was the first time the Winter Games were held in a year different from the Summer Olympics.
One similarity between PyeongChang and Lillehammer – both are cities of tiny populations: 27,400 in Lillehammer and 43,600 in PyeongChang. The PyeongChang Olympic Organizing Committee can only hope that the similarities don’t stop there as the 1994 Lillehammer Winter Olympics are considered one of the best ever. Costs were not astronomic. Security wasn’t paramount. And the Olympics were welcomed by the local folk.
American speed skater, Dan Jansen, agreed with that sentiment:
The whole experience, not just my experience, but the whole Winter Games themselves in that specific city, were as good as they can be. Just because the people were so proud to host the Games. Winter sports are a way of life there, and it really showed in the way they put the Games on and the attitudes of the people. I don’t want to say they were better than any other, but the way a lot of those stories unfolded, it was certainly hard to compare any Games after that, with all those stories in one Olympics. Every story [every Olympics] is important, but it all just seemed to come together.
And years later, citizens of Lillehammer appear to appreciate their connection to and the impact of the 1994 Olympics. As this post in the blog, Life in Norway, posits, Norwegians enjoy the fruits of the Olympic legacy.
These days, many visitors see Lillehammer as a quiet town. I sure did when I first visited in 2012, as the town centre was almost deserted on a Saturday morning. But it didn’t take long to realise it was because the locals spend their precious leisure time in the mountains, taking advantage of the facilities very few towns of its size are blessed with. Local children zoom around the Olympic arena on sledges and skis, perhaps dreaming of their own future Olympic glory.
May 2018, the Year of the Dog, be a wonderful year for the organizers, the fans and the athletes of the PyeongChang Olympics.
Is it a sport? Is it a game? Whichever you may call it, to Olympians, curling is a sport of long standing that requires teamwork and skill.
Curling is said to have originated over 500 years ago in Scotland, when locals first began to roll large stones across the frozen lochs. According to The Complete Book of the Winter Olympics, curling was played by Scottish soldiers in the mid-18th century in Canada, which is currently the heart of curling – “94% of the world’s curlers live in Canada.”
Curling was a medal-sport first at the 1924 Chamonix Winter Olympics, but was recognized only as an exhibition sport until being revived as an official sport from the 1998 Nagano Olympics.
The essence of curling is the sliding of a granite stone, perfectly round, often polished to a shine, down a 45-meter long sheet of ice, known as the curling sheet. At both ends of the curling sheet are four circles in blue, white, red and yellow, which are the targets for the four players of a curling team. When your stone ends up in one of the circles at the end of a round, points are gained.
Canada’s women’s curling team celebrate after winning the women’s curling gold medal at the 2014 Winter Olympics. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)
The “skip” starts the process from a crouched position, akin to a sprinter, complete with starting blocks. In contrast to a sprinter, the skip comes out of his/her crouch as if uncoiling in slow motion, and then freezing in a deeper crouch as the skip releases the rock. As the granite stone begins its silent glide down the curling sheet, the fury begins. Two of the skip’s teammates then track the stone, applying considerable force on the ice with a broom. By scratching across the ice with a broom, the “sweepers” are clearing frost or debris, and heating up the ice so that the stone can ride more smoothly upon a watery, slicker surface. By sweeping or not sweeping, the players with the brooms can lengthen or shorten the distance traveled by or the direction of the stone.
Sweeping is seen as critical in impacting the outcome of a competition, thus affecting the type of broom used. In the past, curling competitors used corn brooms. As you can see at the end of this video on sweeping, and clearing a path with a corn broom is dramatic as it requires bigger movements. In recent decades, the broom sticks have been upgraded to carbon fiber, making them very light, and the brushes are now synthetic and more effective in creating friction on the ice. The synthetic brush allows the player to be more efficient with their sweeping movements, but still considerable arm and core strength, as well as good flexibility are required to ensure the stone ends up where you want it to go.
He slept on the ground of his crowded home as a child, his grandmother working hard to get food on the table for nine grandchildren. Akwasi Frimpong grew up in a village called Kumasi in the Republic of Ghana, and while he aspired to a better life, he probably had no thought of becoming an Olympian in the speed sliding sport of skeleton.
Skeleton Olympic champions have emerged from only 8 countries in the world, including the US, Great Britain, Canada, Russia and Switzerland. Certainly, running full speed into an icy track of twists and turns, head first on a tiny sled, is not the first thing 99.99999% of the world’s population would try to do, let alone think, particularly in a country where the coldest it gets is about19 degrees Celsius.
And yet Frimpong defied the considerable odds, and has put himself in a position to become Ghana’s first ever Winter Olympian representing his country at the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics in the skeleton competition. To become an Olympian, he has to qualify at the skeleton world cup in mid-January of 2018 by getting into the Top 60 in the world. If he does, he’s going to South Korea.
Perhaps Frimpong’s first big break was leaving Ghana at the age of 8, and move to the Netherlands where his mother had emigrated to. In a more developed economy with more opportunities, Frimpong was shaped by his coach at his junior high school into a track star.
His second big break was having Sammy Monsels as his junior high school coach, a man who competed as a sprinter at the 1972 and 1976 Summer Olympics. According to this article on Olympic.org, Monsels created a vision for Frimpong.
“It was Sammy who really instilled the dream of the Olympics in me. Within two months, I went to the Dutch Junior Indoor Championships and missed out on the 60m final by 0.01 seconds. That summer, I missed out on the 100m final, again by 0.01 seconds… I asked my coach what I needed to do to become a gold medalist. He spoke to me about self-discipline and it all started from there.
Frimpong went on to become the 200 meter Dutch junior champion. But because he was still an illegal alien, he could not benefit from any international competition. What if immigration would not let him back into the country? Competing overseas was too big a risk. And his illegal status stopped him from asking to enter any high school. Fortunately, there existed an institution that looked beyond Frimpong’s legal status – the Johan Cruyff Institute. Named after Holland’s (and the world’s) most famous soccer player, Johan Cruyff, this school is designed to develop the abilities of students, athletes as well as business professionals.
Frimpong’s third break was to have a neighbor who cared. The neighbor was a writer, and she wrote so persuasively, even explaining Frimpong’s illegal status, that the Johan Cruyff College took a chance on the Ghanaian. Frimpong enter the school and earned his school’s international student of the year award. The award was to be presented in Barcelona, Spain, but because Frimpong was too scared to leave the country, Johan Cruyff himself flew to Holland just to present the award to Frimpong.
Eventually, in 2008, at the age of 22, Frimpong became a Dutch citizen. He got an athletic scholarship to study in America at Utah Valley University, and dreamed of making the Netherlands track team for the 2012 London Games. But he was not able to qualify, hampered by an injury.
Entering the second half of his 20s, his dreams of running track in the Olympics was fading. But he got a visit from the Dutch bobsleigh team, and was asked to try out as their brakeman for a World Cup race in Utah. Frimpong showed enough promise that he progressed to make the Netherlands national bobsleigh team. Unfortunately, his results were just under the cut, and Frimpong missed out on the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.
At the age of 28, failing to make both a Summer Olympics and a Winter Olympics, Frimpong could have ended his pursuit of an Olympic Games. And that’s when he discovered skeleton. And for some reason, this sport clicked.
I set myself the goal of becoming the first African to win a medal in Winter Olympic history. I knew it would take me four to six years to become really good, so initially my target was the 2022 Games. But when I started racing in 2016, I surprised myself. A lot of coaches said that I was sliding like someone who had been doing the sport for several years.
And so Frimpong is at the door of his long journey to make the Olympics. If he does qualify for the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics, he will be first black skeleton athlete in Olympic history.
Note on February 2, 2018: On January 15, 2018, he got his wish and is headed for the Olympics.
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