Winter Olympics

Figure skater Kim Yu-Na, South Korea Kim, 18, defeated rival Mao Asada of Japan at the recent Four Continents competition, a test event for the Olympics. A secure jumper, she's also expressive and gets high marks for her skating skills and artistry. She trains in Toronto and should have support from Canadian fans and the Korean community in Vancouver. Figure skater Patrick Chan, Canada Most male figure skaters don't peak until their early 20s. Chan, 18, may be an exception.

Canadian skier Sarah Burke, a leading pioneer of the freestyle halfpipe and the best-known athlete in her sport, died Thursday, nine days after crashing at the bottom of the superpipe during a training run in Utah. She was 29. Burke, who was a driving force behind the inclusion of the halfpipe in the 2014 Winter Olympics, was injured Jan. 10 while training at Park City Mountain resort. Tests revealed that she sustained "irreversible damage to her brain due to lack of oxygen and blood after cardiac arrest," according to a statement released on behalf of her family.

Members of the Winter Olympics' Organizing Committee met at Albertville, France, to assess the impact of a heavy weekend snowfall and torrential rains that caused an avalanche on the new Olympic downhill course. The harsh weather resulted in three deaths and several injuries. Spokesman Jean-Marc Eysseric said that "the committee found no major damage to any material or equipment needed for the upcoming Games."

When a government-owned ski resort here was recently named the host site of the 2018 Winter Olympics, scores of potato farmers who have worked this land for generations cheered alongside the rest of the nation. But the celebration banners had been unfurled for only a few days when residents of this rustic mountain town replaced them with protest pennants. For a decade, the nearest town to the main Olympic venue did its part, they say. Through two previous unsuccessful attempts to woo the Games to Pyeongchang county in South Korea's heartland, residents waged cleanup drives, hosted foreign visitors and played cheerleader.

According to the Nielsen ratings released by NBC on Monday afternoon, 190 million people watched some part of the Vancouver Olympics on the various networks of NBC, making it the second-most-watched Winter Games. The Games surpassed the 2002 Salt Lake City Games but trailed the 1994 Lillehammer Games, which were highlighted by the Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan controversy. The Lillehammer Olympics had 204 million viewers; the Salt Lake City Olympics had 187 million. In Canada, CTV reported that 22 million people, about two-thirds of the Canadian population, watched as the Canadian Olympic hockey team defeated the United States for the gold medal Sunday.

Dick Button is speaking from Vancouver, where he will offer his immediately insightful and honest commentary on Olympic figure skating for NBC. "We need the Olympics," he said on the eve of the opening ceremony for the Winter Games. Button, 80, has been around 17 of these Olympic Games, and if you want to suggest that the Olympics don't matter so much anymore, what with television coverage tape-delayed (at least for those of us in the West -- you know, the time zone where Vancouver, Canada, is)

Cecilia Colledge, 87, an innovative figure skater who was the youngest athlete to compete in the Winter Olympics, died April 12 at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Mass. Colledge was 11 years 73 days old when she competed for her native Britain in the 1932 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, N.Y. She won a silver medal at the 1936 Olympics in Germany, second to Norwegian star Sonja Henie, and had been a favorite for the 1940 Winter Games, which were canceled because of World War II. Colledge was world champion in 1937, British champion five times and European champion on three occasions.

The Olympic Games will be heading back to South Korea after a 30-year hiatus. The International Olympic Committee announced Wednesday it has selected Pyeongchang, South Korea, as the host of the 2018 Winter Olympic Games. IOC President Jacques Rogge said the city received a majority of votes after just one round of voting among its 95 members. It marks the first time a city has won an Olympic bid in the first round of voting since 1995 when Salt Lake City was awarded the 2002 Winter Games.

Many Seoul residents, some with their faces colored the blue and red of the South Korean national flag, thrust their fists in the air and hugged strangers when word came that Pyeongchang, South Korea would host the 2018 Winter Olympics. In a landslide victory, Pyeongchang beat bids by Munich, Germany and Annecy, France. The South Korean town finished with 63 of a possible 95 votes. Munich garnered 25 and Annecy got seven. "It gave me goose bumps when I heard that we got it," said Jeong Shin-don, a white-collar worker in his 40s. "I'm beyond being excited.

NBC Universal is relieved that its winter financial wipeout is finally over. Parent company General Electric Co. on Friday released its first-quarter results, which included, as expected, substantial losses generated by NBC's coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada. Although GE posted a 32% drop in earnings, the company nonetheless beat analysts' expectations. GE Chairman Jeffrey Immelt said there were signs the economy was improving, along with the industrial giant's profit margins -- except for a couple of problem divisions.

Having been promoted heavily by NBC throughout the Olympics -- "promoted senseless," I almost wrote -- "The Marriage Ref" premiered, or was sneak-previewed, Sunday night in what on the West Coast was the middle of the closing ceremonies of the Winter Olympics. (The show officially bows Thursday, at its regular time and full-hour length, plugging one of the holes vacated by "The Jay Leno Show.") Its most notable feature, both as a tease and in fact, is the participation, as creator, executive producer and panelist, of Jerry Seinfeld, Comedy God. The big idea here is that a neutral party adjudicates -- in a supposedly binding and hopefully hilarious way -- minor marital disagreements.

O Canada, did it ever fill the arena, everyone singing, players with their thick arms draped around one another, fans weeping into their giant red jerseys, surely one of the loudest anthems ever. You know what? Let Canada sing. It earned it. It needed it. The joy, the relief, the redemption, and, of course, the farewell. On the final day of Canada's official duties as Olympic hosts, its national sport survived America's national grit Sunday, winning the gold-medal hockey game over the United States in overtime, 3-2, in front of a bouncing sea of braying red. The winners celebrated with the game's best ice dancing, nearly two dozen men locked in a jumping, board-rattling embrace.

In the beginning, on the morning of the opening ceremony, there was the death of an athlete pursuing his sport, a life snuffed out at age 21 in a way so awful it will forever haunt the memory of the 2010 Winter Olympics. In the end, a few hours before the Olympic flame burning here for 17 days went out Sunday night, there was an athletic moment so brilliant it also will be an everlasting memory of these Games. In between, there were organizational problems that will be forgotten, the same way they disappeared after the first few days, when the sun came out in this glimmering city and sparkled over fresh mountain snow limned against an impossibly blue sky. Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili will live forever as a symbol of what can go horribly wrong when athletes push the limits under conditions that some say were questionable, from the design of a sliding track officials already knew was both unusually fast and dangerously unforgiving, to the relative inexperience of the athlete in a sport where split-second decisions at 90 mph are required.

According to the Nielsen ratings released by NBC on Monday afternoon, 190 million people watched some part of the Vancouver Olympics on the various networks of NBC, making it the second-most-watched Winter Games. The Games surpassed the 2002 Salt Lake City Games but trailed the 1994 Lillehammer Games, which were highlighted by the Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan controversy. The Lillehammer Olympics had 204 million viewers; the Salt Lake City Olympics had 187 million. In Canada, CTV reported that 22 million people, about two-thirds of the Canadian population, watched as the Canadian Olympic hockey team defeated the United States for the gold medal Sunday.