Busy week in PyeongChang. Busy and crucial. One year before the 2018 Winter Games, South Korea is busy hosting the elite of the Olympic disciplines during the essential “test events”. For this week alone, the program of celebrations includes six pre-Olympic events at the sites of PyeongChang and Gangneung. In total, the organizing committee (POCOG) must set 26 to music, between November 2016 and April 2017. Copious.
A first assessment will be drawn up at the end of February. It will be positive overall, but will reveal certain gray areas. The refrain is known. First concerned, the athletes say they are “impressed” by the quality of the welcome and the professionalism of the organization. Example: American lugers. Asked by USA Today, Matt Mortensen does not hide his pleasure. “The Koreans do things well, even very well,” he says. Everyone seems very happy at the prospect of welcoming the entire planet. They ask us a lot of questions. »
A nice touch: the bus taking the American team to their hotel from Seoul airport made a stop to allow the lugers to have lunch. Even more appreciated: the volunteers provided the athletes with Internet connection codes upon their arrival in the country. Much more unexpected: the lugers were able to choose the music they wanted to hear in the starting area of the competition. Nice.
Elsewhere, the grass is less green. Main areas of concern, one year before the event: housing and transport. The representatives of the national Olympic committees, gathered at the beginning of the month for the traditional heads of mission seminar, have already sounded the alarm. Finding a roof over your head near the Olympic sites promises to be complex. Reaching the competition locations will not be easy either.
The equation turns out to be delicate. Normally, PyeongChang has a population of 44.000 inhabitants. Gangneung, the other center of attraction for the Winter Games in 2018, has 217. Both cities lack hotels. According to several sources, the number of rooms would be very insufficient for officials in the mountain cluster, where the snow disciplines are concentrated. The organizing committee would be aware of this. He must propose solutions to the IOC in the coming weeks.
Less worrying, but very high profile, is the table. THE Korea Herald noted this week that it would be almost impossible to find anything other than Korean dishes in restaurants located near the Olympic sites. The local press would have been alarmed. In PyeongChang, finding a Western restaurant in the competition zone is like a treasure hunt. According to a POCOG spokesperson, the problem has been identified. “It will be resolved before the Games. »
More delicate, the question of transport. The roads leading to the Olympic sites are clearly too narrow to accommodate the influx of athletes, officials, media and especially spectators. Last weekend, organizers had the painful experience of this during an international fireworks festival in Gangneung. The event attracted around 150.000 spectators. But many of them were never able to reach the stands set up for the occasion. They got stuck in a huge traffic jam. The IOC admitted: “Going from one venue to another may take a little longer than expected. »
According to the South Koreans, the commissioning of the future high-speed train between Seoul and PyeongChang should solve both the transport problem and the housing question. By halving the travel time, currently estimated at 4 hours, it will allow spectators, particularly local ones, to go to the sites without needing to stay on site. Above all, it should greatly reduce the number of cars driving to the Olympic zones.
But the rail line will not be open until June. It will not be accessible to the public before the end of 2017. Above all, the last train is scheduled for 23 p.m. Too early, according to several observers, to allow spectators of the later events to return to Seoul the same evening.
