The Winter Olympics is an international sporting event, with events that are performed on snow or ice, once every four years.  This year the Olympics took place from February 9-25 in Pyeongchang County, which is located in South Korea. In order to be rewarded, there is a three class system of medals–gold, silver, and bronze. Interestingly, the gold, silver and bronze medals were first adopted in the 1904 Olympic Games in St. Louis.

The United States earned 23 medals this year–9 gold, 8 silver and 6 bronze. Gold medals were earned by Redmond Gerard, Jamie Anderson, Chloe Kim and Shaun White in snowboarding, Mikaela Shiffrin in alpine skiing, David Wise in freestyle skiing and three by the USA in ice hockey, cross country skiing and curling. Silver medals were earned by Chris Mazdzer in luge,  John-Henry Krueger in short track speed, Nick Goepper in freestyle skiing, United States in bobsleigh, Mikaela Shiffrin in alpine skiing, Alex Ferreira, Kyle Mack and Jamie Anderson in snowboarding. Bronze medals were earned by Arielle Gold in snowboarding, two by Alex and Maia Shibutani in figure skating, two by Brita Sigourney in freestyle skiing and Lindsey Vonn in alpine skiing.

Jennifer Klingeman said, “My favorite event is the snowboarding halfpipe and my least favorite is definitely curling. This year’s highlight was when the 17 year old snowboarder, Redmond Gerard,  won the first gold medal.”

There are fifteen different sports that compete during the winter olympics, but 102 events. These include,  Alpine Skiing, Biathlon, Bobsleigh, Cross Country Skiing, Curling, Figure Skating, Freestyle Skiing, Ice Hockey, Luge, Nordic Combined, Short Track Speed Skating, Skeleton, Ski Jumping, Snowboarding and Speed Skating. There were 92 different countries competing in this international event.

Abby Comia said, “I think the Winter Olympics is better than the Summer Olympics because I enjoy watching figure skating. Also, there are different events that most people aren’t familiar with, so it creates uniqueness.”

In the end, Norway came in first with 39 medals, followed by Germany with 31, Canada with 29, the United States with 23 and the Netherlands with 20.

Eric Noland said, “Overall, I enjoyed watching the Olympics. I think the United States did a good job competing in the events.”