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9 Winter Olympic Athletes to Watch out for During the 2018 Games

The 2018 Winter Olympics are exciting for a lot of reasons; besides having six new nations competing, as well as four new events, the PyeongChang winter games have sent out a message of peace and harmony and could provide a diplomatic truce between North and South Korea.

There are 102 medal events, spread out over 15 sports, and a lot of athletes to look out for, below are some of them:

Alpine skier Lindsey Vonn has won four World Cup championships and competed in the Olympics four times, but at age 33, and after a long battle with injuries, there are rumors that she may be retiring in the near future. If that’s true, then, of course, you would want to watch her compete one last time.

If you’re an ice-hockey fan you’ll definitely be interested in watching NFL star Brian Gionta, who won a Stanley Cup with the New Jersey Devils. He is the oldest member of the team, but at aged 39, he is still up for the challenge and he is taking on the role of captain.

Another interesting pair to watch will be French figure skating duo Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron who are expected to perform well in this year’s games — they missed out on a spot in Sochi in 2014. According to Time, they’ve been dancing together since 2008, and their coach claims they move exceptionally well together, it’s almost as if they aren’t on ice at all.

Erin Jackson is a speed skater, but what makes her story even more remarkable is that she switched to ice only four months before she made the Olympic team, prior to this she had been an inline roller skater. As if that was not remarkable enough on its own, she’s also made her mark in history by becoming the first African-American woman to compete in the United States long-track speedskating team.

If you’ve been keeping tabs on the Olympic news then you would have heard that Nigeria is a nation that is being represented in the 2018 games, and that’s thanks to the Nigerian women’s bobsleigh team. Made up of athletes Moriam Seun Adigun, Ngozi Onwumere, and Akuoma Omeoga, who started a GoFundMe page to get themselves to the games.

Magnus Kim, who will be competing in the cross-country skiing event is another one to watch. His mother is South Korean and his father is Norwegian, but he will be competing for South Korea and has already made history in the sport as being the first from the country to win a gold medal at an international cross-country event, Time reports. This win happened in 2016 at Youth Winter Olympics, and now all eyes will be on Kim to see if he can make history once again.

Remember if you do want to watch the games, PyeongChang is 14 hours ahead of Eastern Time.

[Image via Shutterstock]

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