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On The Ground: The Winter Games

Action, Snackable Moments, Personality — Short Track Has It All

Ben Fischer

I finally found the great atmosphere in Pyeongchang: It was at the short-track speedskating venue all along.

The world’s media talked a lot about the Korean audience’s low enthusiasm here at the Winter Games, and they had a point sometimes. Outdoor snow sports like skiing, snowboarding and luge don’t have much cultural cache here.

But on my last night in Korea, I jumped at an offer to attend the final night of short track, easily the most popular cold-weather sport in this part of the world.

It was spectacular.

Just like a power five college football game, you could feel electricity in the air long before you got your ticket scanned at the Gangneung Ice Arena. Entering the lower bowl, I could tell this was not like any other event here: The place was full to the rafters, all 12,000 seats.

The atmosphere inside Gangneung Ice Arena was electric from start to finish for short-track speedskating.Getty Images

Cheers, chants, pop music and flags added to the scene, and I could tell many fans arrived early and found their own ways to build the buzz. The gentlemen I climbed over to get to my seat had at least two empty beer cans beneath each of them.

And the sport! I’d never seen it before in person. Television doesn’t do it justice. These skaters circle a figure-skating rink in eight seconds — I couldn’t keep them in my camera frame as they turned the corners. They expertly weave in and out for position, not touching each other nearly as often as you’d think.

But when they do make contact, “fall” isn’t the right word for what happens to their bodies. You wouldn’t say Martin Truex Jr.’s car “fell down.” That’s what it feels like: NASCAR with humans but no cars.

Also helping the vibe was a serious regional rivalry. I was sitting with a Chinese crowd from International Olympic Committee sponsor Alibaba, and before the first race, I held my breath until I was sure they wouldn’t expect me to wave a miniature Chinese flag like everyone else. They were badly outmanned but made their presence known when their man Wu Dajing set a world record in the 500 meters, 39.584 seconds, holding off two Koreans on his tail.

South Korean fans go nuts for their favorite winter sport.Getty Images

Spectators must be absolutely silent at the start of the race. So at every start, all 12,000 raucous fans would zip it in unison. The gun would go off, and they’d all start screaming again. In the 40 seconds or so it takes to finish the men’s 500-meter race, you could close your eyes and know what position the Korean was in the entire time, just by hearing the roars and lulls of the crowd.

The way the races are structured helps keep the excitement going. In the men’s 500, a field of 15 skaters did three separate quarterfinals, then two semifinals, then an “A” final for the medals and a “B” final for World Cup points.

So that single event was actually seven separate 40-second sprints. All were decided by mere feet. Add in five more races in other events that night, and you had 12 separate races re-creating the silence-roar-scream-cheer cycle.

Then the women’s 1,000-meter finals followed, and at the end, the men’s 5,000-meter relay, a dizzying spectacle of three countries, with three skaters on the ice simultaneously, taking turns. (Even the “long” race is over in seven minutes.)

Ultimately, it was a disappointing night for the hometown fans thanks to some bad luck for Korean racers and Wu’s world record. But the excitement never waned.

Hey, western sports business world: I hear you’re looking for a sport that can give you snackable social media content, heavy action, personalities and competitions that fit in between your YouTube views and Facebook sessions.

Short track has it all.

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