Iciness Olympics 2018: South and North Korean athletes unite all over opening ceremony in Pyeongchang

Hosts South Korea produced a display of unity with neighbours North Korea all around the gap ceremony of the 2018 Iciness Olympics in Pyeongchang.

Their athletes entered below the identical flag all around the parade, after months of rigidity within the Korean peninsula.

« We’re stronger than all of the forces that desire to divide us, » declared Olympic president Thomas Bach.

Lizzy Yarnold carried Large Britain’s flag, while Russian athletes came in below the honest Olympic flag.

Russia is banned from the Video games, and the drawing near near Paralympics, on account of the 2016 McLaren describe which claimed higher than 1,000 of the country’s sportspeople benefitted from reveal-subsidized doping.

The Worldwide Olympic Committee invited 169 Russians who receive met the anti-doping standards to compete as honest athletes and their body of workers will possible be is called the ‘Olympic Athletes from Russia’.

North Korea ice hockey player Chung Gum Hwang and South Korean bobsledder Obtained Yun-jong were joint flagbearers.

An estimated 35,000 spectators all around the Olympic Stadium got seat heaters, wind shields, hats and gloves with temperatures as little as -6C all around the 2 hour-lengthy ceremony.

South Korea president delivers message of peace

Senior political figures from North Korea and USA – two of the countries on the centre of the political row – were both display.

Kim Yo-jong, the influential sister of North Korea chief Kim Jong-un, used to be sat one row behind USA vice-president Mike Pence within the VIP portion.

South Korea’s president Moon Jae-in shook fingers alongside with her and said on the ceremony: « I’d clutch to capture this opportunity to boom greetings and a message of friendship from the individuals of Korea.

« The Seoul 1988 Summer season Video games paved the manner for reconciliation between east and west – breaking down the wall of the Cool Conflict. Thirty years after web hosting the Summer season Video games, the Pyeongchang Olympics has commenced with a hope for peace from everyone world huge.

« It used to be with an ardent need that the individuals of Korea aspired to host the Iciness Video games, the most fantastic divided nation within the realm. It mirrors the Olympic spirit in its pursuit of peace. »

North Korea announced it used to be to ship a delegation to Pyeongchang in January after it met its South counterparts of their first excessive-stage talks in higher than two years.

The body of workers consists of twenty-two athletes who will compete in five sports activities, even supposing their females’s ice hockey gamers will compete in a unified Korean body of workers. They carried out collectively for the major time final Sunday of their most fantastic practice match, which they misplaced Three-1 to Sweden.

Custom and colour illuminate ceremony

The ‘wow moments’ within the ceremony integrated the formation of the Olympic Rings made up of 1,218 drones – a Guinness World Legend for drones venerable in a performance – and 100 skiers.

There used to be also ‘the imaginative and prescient of peace within the sky’ which used to be a constellation all around the enviornment, while ‘the steadiness of yin and yang’ noticed Korean drummers carry out in unison earlier than forming the South Korea flag. And the centre of the stadium used to be lit up within the sight-catching ‘hyperlink to the realm’ section.

One day of the parade of athletes, Tonga’s flagbearer, sinister-country skier Pita Taufatofua, came out into the enviornment with out carrying a top, despite sub-zero temperatures. He wore identical attire all around the gap ceremony at Rio 2016, when he competed in taekwondo. Bermuda’s contingent wore shorts all around the parade in Pyeongchang.

There used to be also a performance of John Lennon’s Factor in, which integrated the formation of a immense dove of peace.

All of it culminated within the ceremony centrepiece, which used to be the mature lighting fixtures of the Olympic flame. That noticed the final torchbearer Yuna Kim, who obtained Olympic ice skating gold in 2010, on the tip of a slope mild the flame as 30 fire rings ascended in direction of the white moon-shaped porcelain cauldron.

GB handed five-medal map

The 18 days of competition will feature 2,925 athletes competing in 15 sports activities below Ninety three flags chasing 102 gold medals. Six countries are taking part within the Iciness Video games for the major time: Ecuador, Eritrea, Kosovo, Malaysia, Nigeria and Singapore.

Large Britain’s body of workers consists of fifty eight competitors, with short computer screen velocity skater Elise Christie and freestyle skiers James Woods and Izzy Atkin all in with appropriate possibilities of selecting up medals.

Any other medal prospect, snowboarder Katie Ormerod, used to be ruled out after struggling a damaged heel and wrist after crashing twice in slopestyle practice.

UK Sport has space a map of on the least five medals from the 2018 Video games.

Developing on Saturday – day one

10:00-12:50 GMT: Triple world champion Elise Christie begins her inform to at final land an Olympic title with the 500m heats. Brief-computer screen velocity skating body of workers-mates Charlotte Gilmartin and Kathryn Thomson will also bustle within the 500m.

12:10-14:30: Olympic historic past will possible be made with a first unified Korean body of workers taking on Switzerland within the females’s ice hockey.

5 golds up for grabs

07:15-08:20: Corrupt country snowboarding – females’s 7.5km + 7.5km skiathlon

10:00-13:00: Brief-computer screen velocity skating – men’s 1500m

eleven:00-12:50: Prolonged-computer screen velocity skating – females’s Three,000m

eleven:15-12:45: Biathlon – females’s 7.5km rush including GB’s Amanda Lightfoot

12:35-14:20: Ski jumping – men’s long-established hill particular person final