As many of you may know, from following my blog, I like to watch winter sports on TV. And as you may have noticed it’s now time for the winter Olympics in Peyongchang in South-Korea. Norway went in to the games with a goal of getting as many as 28 medals. This seems like an extreme amount for a country with only around 5 million people, but even if it is very ambitious we are quite good at winter sports here up north.
This first week we have proven that our goal might not have been too unrealistic. After a week we now have 20 medals, 7 Gold, 8 silver and 5 bronze. And there is still a lot of chances left.
Norway’s best day in the Olympics ever came Thursday 15th of February with 6 medals in one day. Our alpine boys Aksel Lund Svindal and Kjetil Jansrud started by taking gold and silver medals in the downhill. The alpine women proved that they are good to by Ragnhild Mowinkel taking silver in the giant slalom. In cross country skiing the Swedish favorite had a bad day, but our largest hope Marit Bjørgen only managed a shared bronze. But Norway has more good skiers and the to and coming Ragnhild Haga got the gold. After that the biathlon boys were tasked with trying to fix a bad start to the competition. And Johannes Tingnes Bø got his gold medal and touched the nation when he hugged his brother who didn’t do so well as him after the race.
Maren Lundby took Norway’s first god medal in ski jumping for women in the Olympics and she became the 100th Norwegian to get a gold medal in the Olympics.
Today was the Norwegian women’s relay. Last Olympics our ski prepping team was very unlucky with their prepping and the Norwegian’s, that was the favorites for the gold ended up without a medal at all. This year they where favorites together with the Swedish and as always there was a lot of discussion in Norway over who got a spot on the team. Our girl on the 2nd round had a terrible day and was so stiff and tired we all just hoped she would manage to get to the next girl and send her off. She used all her last powers to try to not loose to many seconds and the girl she sent off was none other than gold winner Ragnhild Haga, who took us so close to the Swedish team that Marit Bjørgen managed to get the gold for Norway!
In addition to this we started of the Olympics by getting gold, silver and bronze in the first cross country competition for men. We also have gotten medals in ski jump for men, Super-G for men, biathlon for women, cross country sprint for men and women and 5000 meter ice skating for men.
The Olympics brings out all the feelings, from extreme happiness to huge disappointments. The outsiders that surpasses everyone’s expectations, the favorites who finally get their medals, or fail. Watching how happy or disappointed the athletes are after their performances and listening the interviews with them is just wonderful. Here, they really engage the nation.
