Wesley's Tool-Box

While I saw many Ice Hockey matches when I lived in Canada, it was the first time my kids saw a match in person because it's not a popular sport in Korea. They were still enthusiastic about it because they read that it involved a lot of action. We were going to see the Team Olympic Athlete from Russia and Team Slovenia play. As it would end by 7PM, the timing would give us enough time to have a quick dinner and move onto see the Curling event at 8PM.


Russian players had been traditionally strong, so I expected a bit of a lopsided game. It was up to Slovenia to put up some good defense. Although our seats were at the top end of the stadium, they nevertheless offered a good overall view of the game. I brought a camera with zoom lens, but I never had to take it out.

With a large number of fans cheering on their back, the Russian athletes racked up the score with relative ease. By the middle of the 2nd period the score was at 5:0. But Slovenia would not go down without a fight.




In the end, Slovenia managed to score two goals, one each in the 2nd and 3rd period. It did not stem the tide of the Russian onslaught, but we applauded their efforts. After a quick snack we started walking towards the Gangneung Curling Centre.




The Curling Centre was situated at the far end of the Olympic Park, taking about 20 minutes' walk to get there. It was a good idea to have a snack instead of a full meal - otherwise we wouldn't have made it on time.


Again, I've seen a lot of Curling games during my life in Canada, but the kids haven't seen a single game before this Olympics. Thankfully, the Korean teams were doing a lot better than expected, and so they became familiar with the sport while watching the TV broadcasts.


As fate would have it, one of the Men's Curling matches being played pitted Korea against Canada. We also had Canadian fans sitting right next to us. It was shaping up to be a fairly interesting evening. Korea would have the hammer for the 1st end, as the result of the Last Stone Draw before the beginning of the game.






Team Canada was traditionally very strong, and the Korean Men's team already lost all of the previous three matches. Despite the bleak odds, we could see that Team Korea was putting up a good show. We cheered on the best we could.




Sadly, the clock was going past 9PM and the kids were starting to get tired. It was clear that they wouldn't be able to stay up until the end of the match. We kept watching until the beginning of the 5th end, as Canada was leading at 4:2. Then we started to work our way back to the opposite side of the Olympic Park for our shuttle bus. We later found out that Korea did well, but sadly lost out by a single point.






As we walked back, we took some final commemorative photos in the Olympic Park, eventually getting onto the shuttle bus by 9:45PM. We ended up returning to the hotel two hours later. It was a very "full" day of Olympic experience for us - something we will remember for a long time to come. No doubt we were glad see firsthand that the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics was run so smoothly and successfully.