Ester Ledecka stood at the bottom of the hill, staring intently at the scoreboard while her coaches, team, family — heck, everybody in the whole place — erupted in screams of delirium.

Ledecka didn’t understand why. Nor could she understand why the scoreboard hadn’t been updated. It showed her in first place, and surely that was a mistake.

“I was thinking, `OK, they’re going to change the time. I’m going to wait for a little bit, and they’re going to switch and put some more seconds on,’ ” the Czech skier said. “I was just staring at the board and nothing was happening. Everybody was screaming and I just started to think about, `OK, this is weird. Why do they scream?’ ”

Because, Ester, you just pulled off the most spectacular upset and stunning result in Winter Olympics history.

Eric Heiden and his five gold medals? Hermann Maier and his back-from-the-dead gold? The Miracle on Ice hockey team? None of them compare to Ledecka, the snowboarder who crashed Alpine skiing and then snagged one of its biggest prizes.

Happy enough just to be the first person to compete in both sports at the Winter Olympics, Ledecka, 22, carved a place for herself in history Saturday by winning the women’s Super-G . Lindsey Vonn, Sochi Olympic champion Anna Veith, current World Cup leader Nicole Schmidhofer — Ledecka beat them all. Starting from the 26th spot, after some had already declared Veith the winner, she posted a time of 1:21.11, finishing just .01 seconds ahead of the Austrian.

“I love this surprise that sport can provide,” said Italy’s Sofia Goggia, who was 11th. “We give everything so much that’s already known. But also in life, sometimes the good surprises are something different.”

Oh, this is different all right.

Bo Jackson remains an almost mythical figure in sports because it’s impossible to imagine anyone doing what he did ever again. To be the best at the highest level of any sport requires so much time and training that there is little room for anything else. Cross training, perhaps. Maybe toy with another sport in the offseason for a mental break.

But to be world class in two different sports, ones that have similar calendars, no less, is unfathomable.

Except to Ledecka.

“It’s quite hard to answer this question because I don’t know how to do just one,” she said when asked how she juggles the two. “For me, it’s normal.”

Ledecka comes by her eclecticness naturally. Her grandfather is Jan Klapac, who played on the Czechoslovakian hockey teams that won the silver medal in 1968 and bronze in 1964. Her mother was a figure skater and her father is a well-known singer in the Czech Republic.

She started skiing when she was 2, and took up snowboarding a few years later because her older brother was doing it. As the years passed, she was told — repeatedly — that she needed to pick one and stick with it.

Snowboarding and skiing are distant cousins, with the emphasis on the distant. It wasn’t so long ago that ski resorts wouldn’t even let snowboarders on their slopes, seeing the upstart punks as one step — maybe — above juvenile delinquents.

They’ll allow them now, grudgingly, but the Alpine crowd still has something of a superiority complex about its counterculture brethren. Alpine skiers are seen as athletes, while snowboarders are looked at more as performers.

But Ledecka didn’t care. Though she’s had far more success in snowboarding — she’s won world titles in both parallel slalom and parallel giant slalom, the event in which she’ll compete next week — she refused to give up skiing.

She made her World Cup debut in 2016, and tries to split her time evenly between the circuits. Ledecka joked that she sometimes feels like the child of divorced parents as she shuttles back and forth between her snowboard and skiing coaches, but snowboard coach Justin Reiter said she is the one who makes the crazy schedule work.

“She’s unrelenting in a task,” he said.

Reiter said Ledecka’s speed in skiing gives her an advantage in snowboard while the balance and control she needs in snowboarding help her in skiing. He pointed to the last jump in Saturday’s race, where she landed in such a deep crouch he was afraid she might fall.

“She was able to save it,” Reiter said.

Ledecka said she goes to every starting gate telling herself she can win, but let’s be real. Vonn and Veith, they’re giants in Alpine skiing, Ledecka said, holding her thumb and index far apart, while she is “this big,” drawing the fingers close together.

Why, the idea of winning was so far from her mind Saturday she didn’t even bother to put makeup on before her race. She did interviews with her goggles still covering her face.

“It’s my brand,” she cracked before fessing up that she wasn’t camera ready.

Now that she’s an Olympic champion, the pressure on Ledecka to pick one sport over the other is sure to be even greater. But she’ll have none of it.

She’s a snowboarder and a skier, and there’s no way for her to be one without the other.

“I was standing there as a snowboarder a little bit in my heart, and all the girls are just (Alpine) specialists and there was a lot of pressure on them,” Ledecka said, recalling her thoughts when was at the start gate. “I was just, `C’mon, just do the best run you can, skier.’”

And then Ledecka was off, taking the Olympics on the most improbable and epic ride it’s ever seen, one that will never, ever be forgotten.

By Nancy Armour

This article was republished with permission from the original author and 2015 Ronald Reagan Media Award recipient, Nancy Armour, and the original publisher, USA Today. Follow columnist Nancy Armour on Twitter @nrarmour.

Applications for six new positions have been posted on the Paris 2024 website.

These include a director of commercial development and marketing, a director of public affairs, a director of communication and a director of brand, creativity and commitment.

The list is completed by a director responsible for legal affairs and another responsible for the integration of the vision.

Deadlines for all the positions have been set for February 23 in a process overseen by recruitment companies Hoogstoël & Associés and Korn Ferry International.

According to French website Francs Jeux, finalists will then be interviewed by Paris 2024 President Tony Estanguet and chief executive Etienne Thobois before an appointment is made in early March.

It is then hoped that those chosen will be in place to participate at the first official meeting of the IOC Coordination Commission on June 18 and 19.

Separate recruitment processes are already underway for an assistant director and director of administration and finance, a director of international relations and a director of human resources.

Both Estanguet and Los Angeles 2028 chairman Casey Wasserman have visited the Winter Olympic Games here.

Los Angeles 2028 have not yet begun hiring for many of these positions because they are not necessary with over 10 years to go until the Games take place.

They have, however, reportedly begun to search for a top executive of the joint venture set-up in conjunction with the United States Olympic Committee to sell domestic rights.

These rights can be sold from January 2019.

Wasserman chairman told the Sports Business Daily that he would be “shocked” if they were not “significantly staffed” by summer.

He said that the Board of Directors of the joint venture will consist of two appointments from Los Angeles 2028 and two from the United States Olympic Committee.

By Nick Butler

Republished with permission from insidethegames.biz. 

In South Korea, all three participated together rather than speaking their words separately.

The “athlete,” South Korea’s skater Mo Tae-bum, took the lead by saying: “We promise to take part in these Olympic Games, respecting and abiding by the rules and in the spirit of fair play.

“We all commit ourselves to sport without doping and cheating.

“We do this, for the glory of sport, for the honor of our teams and in respect for the fundamental principles of Olympism.”

The change was agreed by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Executive Board back in September and after the revelations of doping at Sochi 2014, the words had even greater resonance in Pyeongchang.

It is the latest major revision to the Olympic Oath since it was first introduced at the 1920 Antwerp Games, some four years before the first Winter Olympics.

The idea is thought to have come from Baron Pierre de Coubertin himself. He was IOC President in the early part of the 20th century when the question of amateur status was a burning issue. He circulated questionnaires on the matter to different countries and received replies which he described as “madly contradictory.”

In a letter to to Charles Simon of the “French Federation Gymnastique and Sportive”, Coubertin suggested that “one need only recall the concern of the ancients that only athletes beyond reproach should participate in the Olympiads.”

Matters soon came to a head. American Jim Thorpe was stripped of pentathlon and decathlon gold medals won in Stockholm at the 1912 Games. His crime was infringing strict rules on amateurism then in force by playing baseball for money.

Thorpe had been one of the great stars of the Games and although there was a degree of sympathy, he was harshly dealt with.

“How can one think that for an instant, that if he had been called upon to swear upon his country’s flag, he would have run the risk of swearing a false oath?” wrote Coubertin.

War meant there would be no Games in 1916 but when Olympic competition resumed in 1920, Belgian fencer Victor Boin became the first person to take the athlete’s oath.

He did so grasping his national flag, in this case the Belgian tricolor.

“The reviver of the modern Olympic Games paid me the honor of selecting me to take the Olympic Oath in the name of all competitors – it was the first time it had been done,” said Boin later.

Boin competed in three Olympic Games in water polo and swimming as well as fencing, and described them as “the most precious memories of my youth, a love of competition in an atmosphere of fair play.”

In 1924, a winter sports week was held in the French resort of Chamonix. Only in retrospect would the IOC call them Olympic Winter Games. Even so, an Olympic style oath was spoken by Camille Mandrillon, the French flag bearer.

He gave an “Olympic” salute and held his right arm in a raised position as he did so. He wore military uniform as many competitors did at the time. Later in the week, Mandrillon won gold in an event called the “military ski patrol”, a combination of skiing and shooting which was a forerunner of biathlon.

In 1932, the Games were held in the small American town of Lake Placid for the first time. The oath was taken by speed skater Jack Shea who went on to win two gold medals.

“We swear that we will take part in the Olympic Games in loyal competition, respecting the regulations which govern them and desirous of participating in them in the true spirit of sportsmanship for the honor of our country and for the glory of sport,” he said.

Shea remained involved with sport for the rest of his life and started a family dynasty. His son Jim and grandson Jim Jr both competed in the Winter Games.

Jim Jr competed in skeleton and was chosen to speak the oath in 2002 when the Games were held in Salt Lake City. Just as his grandfather had done 80 years before, he followed participation in this ritual with a gold medal.

Sadly, his grandfather did not live to see either of these events. He had died in a car crash only a few weeks before the Games began.

By this time the World Anti Doping Agency had been established. The wording of the oath was changed to include a significant new clause.

“Committing ourselves to a sport without doping and without drugs,” it reads.

An oath for judges and referees had also become part of the ceremony. This was introduced in 1972 and the first to speak the new oath was ski jumping official Fumio Azaki at Sapporo.

“In the name of all the judges and officials, I promise that we shall officiate in these Olympic Games with complete impartiality, respecting and abiding by the rules which govern them in the true spirit of sportsmanship,” he read.

Women have taken part in the Winter Games since the start, but it was not until 1956 that they were invited to take the Olympic Oath. Italian skier Giuliana Chenal Minuzzo had won downhill bronze in 1952 and was selected to read in front of the crowds at Cortina D’Ampezzo four years later.

At the next Games in 1960, American figure skater Carol Heiss spoke the oath in Squaw Valley. Heiss went on to win gold but it would be another 32 years before a woman took this prominent role again at a Winter Games.

French skater Suraya Bonaly spoke the oath in Albertville in 1992. The next woman chosen was Canadian ice hockey star Hayley Wickenheiser at Vancouver 2010. The oath taker represents the other athletes and for her it was the prelude to a more lengthy spell speaking on their behalf as an athlete member of the IOC.

It had also been in Canada that a female judge took the “fair play” pledge at a Winter Games for the first time. As a competitor Suzanne Morrow-Francis had won a figure skating bronze in the pairs in 1948, and returned as an official to speak the oath at Calgary 1988.

Some subsequent cities alternated men and women in the ritual.

The newest of the oaths has only once been taken at a Winter Games. The oath taken by a coach was introduced in the wake of lengthy discussions about the “entourage” – those who surround an athlete both in preparation and competition. It was introduced at the 2010 Youth Olympics and later transplanted to the Olympic Games.

“In the name of all the coaches and other members of the athletes’ entourage, I promise that we shall commit ourselves to ensuring that the spirit of sportsmanship and fair play is fully adhered to and upheld in accordance with the fundamental principles of Olympism,” the pledge reads.

It means Alpine skiing coach Anastasia Popkova from Russia, who delivered the words at Sochi 2014, might therefore have a unique place in Olympic records.

The protocol now calls for the oath taker to hold the Olympic flag, but until the 1980s this was done holding a portion of a national flag.

The last to do so were two great American speed skaters. Terry McDermott, a 1964 gold medalist, did so for the judges while Eric Heiden, destined to be an even more successful competitor with five gold medals, grasped the stars and stripes as he spoke on behalf of his fellow athletes.

By the time skier Bojan Krizaj followed suit at the Kosovo Stadium in Sarajevo, it was the Olympic flag that he held. He spoke Slovenian but competed in the Games as a Yugoslav.

The oath is usually taken in the mother tongue of the host nation, but in 1994, the Norwegians broke with tradition in Lillehammer. Nordic skier Vegard Ulvang and speed skating judge Kari Karing both spoke the words in impeccable English.

It is most usual for one athlete to be chosen but for the last Olympic Games on Korean soil in 1988, two athletes spoke in unison. Unusually they used a ceremonial Olympic flag edged with decoration. This had been presented to the IOC by the Koreans in 1985 and is now used for the handover ceremony at every Summer Games.

The oath is now also a key part of the Youth Olympic Games and few will forget the young Austrian skier Christina Ager.

She briefly forgot her lines at Innsbruck 2012 and inadvertently let out an expletive. There was at least a happy postscript to her embarrassing moment. She won gold and bronze medals later in the week.

By Philip Barker

Republished with permission from insidethegames.biz. 

A spokesperson told Reuters one of the competitors to have been hit by the virus is Fabian Bösch, slopestyle world champion in 2015.

The other has been named by Swiss media as Elias Ambuehl, a three-time Winter X games medalist.

More than 200 people have suffered from the norovirus, which caused vomiting and diarrhea, at Pyeongchang 2018.

The outbreak was initially confined to security staff before it spread to those working for the Organizing Committee.

It has now reached the athletes, although International Olympic Committee Presidential spokesperson Mark Adams has confirmed neither athlete staying at the main Athletes’ Village.

Their accommodation is located at the Phoenix Snow Park, where freestyle skiing and snowboarding events are taking place.

In a statement, Swiss Olympic confirmed two cases but insisted they were no longer showing signs of the virus.

“The victims were immediately accommodated in a single room and had no contact with other athletes,” the statement said.

“The affected athletes were comprehensively cared for by the medical team of Swiss Olympic and are currently no longer displaying symptoms that correspond to the virus

“The remainder of the delegation was also asked to follow the appropriate hygiene instructions (regular and extensive hand washing with soap, disinfection of hands with disinfectant, no shaking hands, etc.)

“We currently assume that these two individual cases remain and that the two athletes have already fully recovered.”

By Liam Morgan

Republished with permission from insidethegames.biz.