What to Watch: TV Times For the 2018 Winter Olympics Schedule Highlights
This yearNBC, in addition to its usual prime-time package, is streaming or broadcasting every event live. PyeongChang is 14 hours ahead of the U.S.’s Eastern time zone, so while Americans might have to wake up early to catch some action, many marquee events have been scheduled to air in the evening. And the audience at home will be cozier: These figure to be the coldest Games since 1994, with average temperatures of 23º at the Alpine venues.
Wednesday, Feb. 7
Curling—mixed doubles (7:05 p.m. EST)
Events actually begin two days before the opening ceremony. The only thing to watch is in fact worth watching: a sport’s Olympic debut. One man and one woman per team, from eight countries, compete in a shortened match (eight ends instead of 10, five stones instead of eight). Siblings Matt and Becca Hamilton from McFarland, Wis., are the U.S. entry.
Thursday, Feb. 8
Figure Skating—team event (8 p.m. EST)
It kicks off with the men’s and pairs short programs and is likely to offer the first glimpse of U.S. champion Nathan Chen. The last American man to reach the podium in figure skating was Evan Lysacek in 2010; Chen, 18, might be next. In today’s analytical scoring system, which prizes jumps and technical mastery, Chen is a star—he landed five quads at nationals.
Friday, Feb. 9
Opening Ceremony (6 a.m. EST)
Schedulers kept the must-see event in prime time in Korea, which means a 3 a.m. start in the Pacific time zone. The drama, as always, centers on who will kindle the cauldron at PyeongChang Olympic Stadium. The best bet is Yuna Kim, the 2010 figure skating champion, who retired after taking silver in Sochi.
Saturday, Feb. 10
Short-Track Speedskating—men’s 1,500 meters (5 a.m. EST)
South Korea has won 42 of its 53 medals in short-track, which is wildly popular. The test event in December 2016 drew 30,000 fans.
Women’s Hockey—Switzerland vs. Korea (7:10 a.m. EST)
Note, the host team is “Korea,” neither North nor South. The squad is expected to be made up of athletes from both countries.
Snowboarding—men’s slopestyle final (8 p.m. EST)
Defending champion Sage Kotsenburg of the U.S. retired in June (he was 23, after all), clearing the stage for 18-year-old Marcus Kleveland, of Dombås, Norway. He was the first to complete a quad cork 1800 in competition and won gold in slopestyle at the 2017 X Games. The U.S. wunderkind is Red Gerard, 17, from Silverthorne, Colo.
Alpine Skiing—men’s downhill (9:00 pm EST)
A U.S. skier hasn’t won this glamorous event since Tommy Moe in 1994, and another is unlikely to take gold here. Look for Beat Feuz of Switzerland—who can beat Feuz?
Sunday, Feb. 11
Luge—men’s final runs (4:50 a.m. EST)
Germany’s Felix Loch is looking to become the second luger to earn three straight gold medals. The U.S. has two men, Chris Mazdzer and Tucker West, who have won on the World Cup circuit.
Snowboarding—women’s slopestyle (8 p.m. EST)
Jamie Anderson of the U.S. took gold in Sochi and silver at the last three X Games. The newest X Games champ is 20-year-old Julia Marino from Westport, Conn. Anderson and Marino are both contenders in Big Air too, and either could become the first female snowboarder to win two gold medals.
Alpine Skiing—women’s giant slalom (8:15 p.m. EST)
Mikaela Shiffrin is best at slalom, but she has improved in giant slalom since finishing fifth in Sochi. She won silver at the world championships last year. Oh, and the greatest U.S. women’s skier ever, Lindsey Vonn, will be making her PyeongChang debut too.
Monday, Feb. 12
Moguls—men’s (5:30 a.m. EST)
Mikael Kingsbury, 25, of Canada has 47 World Cup victories, the most ever. The Sochi silver medalist, Kingsbury hasn’t lost since January 2017.
Speedskating—women’s 1,500 meters (7:30 a.m. EST)
The U.S. was shut out in long track in Sochi for the first time since 1984, but Heather Bergsma, the world-record holder in the 1,500, could give the U.S. its first women’s medal since 2002. Bergsma, who is married to Dutch Olympic 10,000-meters champion Jorrit Bergsma and lives in the Netherlands, could reach the podium in the 500, 1,000, 1,500 and mass start. No U.S. speedskater has taken home two golds in one Games since Bonnie Blair in 1994.
Ski Jumping—women’s (7:50 a.m. EST)
Recovered from the right-knee injury that resulted in a 21st-place finish in Sochi, Sarah Hendrickson leads the U.S. team, but she will face Sara Takanashi of Japan, 21, the most successful female ski jumper in history.
Snowboarding—women’s halfpipe (8 p.m. EST)
Halfpipe is the domain of 17-year-old Chloe Kim from Torrance, Calif., who won her first X Games medal, a silver, at 13. She was too young to compete in Sochi, but at the 2016 Winter Youth Olympics in Lillehammer she earned gold in halfpipe and slopestyle. The chairwoman of the board is Kelly Clark, 34, who in four Olympic appearances has never finished lower than fourth.
Sara Takanashi, 21, has won four World Cup titles and in six years on tour has never finished lower than third at season's end.
Atsushi Tomura/Getty
Tuesday, Feb. 13
Short-Track Speedskating—women’s 500 meters (5 a.m. EST)
All American and all Ghanaian eyes will be on 17-year-old Maame Biney, who immigrated to the U.S. when she was five. It was supposed to be a short visit with her father, Kweku, who was living in Rockville, Md., working as a stevedore. Kweku and Maame saw a sign that read learn to skate this fall at a rink in Reston, Va. “She didn’t even know what skating was,” says Kweku. Now she does.
Alpine Skiing—women’s slalom (8:15 p.m. EST)
It’s all Shiffrin. In Sochi she became the youngest Olympic slalom champion, at 18, and she has continued to dominate the event with 23 World Cup victories since.
Snowboarding—men’s halfpipe (8:30 p.m. EST)
Two-time world champion Scotty James, 23, leads a formidable Australian squad and his backside 1260 double corks could dethrone iPod—Iouri Podladtchikov of Switzerland. Shaun White, the 2006 and ’10 Olympic champion who finished fourth in Sochi, will try to regain his title at age 31
Wednesday, Feb. 14
Nordic Combined—individual, normal hill (1 a.m. EST)
A gold medalist in Vancouver and France’s flagbearer in Sochi, Jason Lamy Chappuis was one of the most successful athletes in the history of his sport when he retired in 2015. But after qualifying to be a commercial pilot, he decided to strap his skis back on. The winner of 26 individual World Cup events and three consecutive overall World Cup titles between 2010 and ’12, Lamy Chappuis was born to a French father and an American mother in Missoula, Mont., but brought up in France’s Jura Mountains. He is no longer a favorite, but he can fly anyway.
Luge—doubles (6:20 a.m. EST)
Jayson Terdiman and Matt Mortensen of the U.S. competed in Sochi in doubles but not on the same sled. Terdiman finished 11th with Christian Niccum, who retired in 2014, while Mortensen was 14th with Preston Griffall, who went on to compete on American Ninja Warrior. The new pairing was seventh in the final World Cup standings in 2015, fifth in ’16 and third last season.
Speedskating—women’s 1,000 meters (5 a.m. EST)
Bergsma of the U.S. is favored; countrywoman Brittany Bowe holds the world record.
Figure Skating—pairs free skate (8:30 p.m. EST)
A Soviet or Russian duo has won 13 of the last 14 Olympics, but a Canadian or Chinese pair took the last three world championships. The favored teams are China’s Sui Wenjing and Han Cong, and Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov of Russia. Harley Windsor and his partner, Ekaterina Alexandrovskaya, won’t be among the contenders, but Windsor, 21, from western Sydney, is the first indigenous Australian to compete in a Winter Games. When Harley was eight, his mother took a wrong turn while looking for a fast-food restaurant and drove into the parking lot of a small rink. He asked his mother if he could take a look inside. Spoiler: She let him.
Thursday, Feb. 15
Cross-country Skiing—women’s sprint, freestyle (1:30 a.m. EST)
Kikkan Randall, 35, has been a mainstay of Team USA for more than 15 years, making her first Olympic team in 2002. She skipped the ’16 season to have her first child, son Breck, but returned last year to win bronze at worlds. Jessie Diggins, 24, of the U.S. also won a medal—silver—at worlds, and had eight top five finishes in ’17.
Biathlon—men’s 20K individual race (6 a.m. EST)
Lowell Bailey’s victory in the 20K in 2017 gave Team USA its first world championships gold medal ever. (Biathlon is the only winter Olympic sport in which the U.S. has never won a medal.) Susan Dunklee of Barton, Vt., added a silver in the 12.5K mass start to claim the first individual medal by a U.S. woman at a world championship.
Men’s Hockey—Czech Republic vs. South Korea (7:10 a.m. EST)
The host country’s coach is 50-year-old Korean-American Jim Paek, a two-time Stanley Cup champion with the Penguins.
Figure Skating—men’s short program (8 p.m. EST)
Defending gold medalist Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan is looking to become the first man to repeat as champion since Dick Button of the U.S. in 1952.
Snowboarding—women’s snowboard cross (8 p.m. EST)
Lindsey Jacobellis, 32, of the U.S. has won all nine of her combined X Games and world championships starts since 2007, but she has zero Olympic gold medals. She was leading in ’06 when she fell on a trick move on the last jump, and she crashed out in the semifinals in ’10 and ’14.
Friday, Feb. 16
Freestyle Skiing—women’s aerials (6 a.m. EST)
Two-time Olympian Ashley Caldwell, 24, of Ashburn, Va., won the 2017 world championships by becoming the first woman to land “the Daddy”—a full, double full, full. She’ll need it to defeat the favorite, Xu Mengtao of China, who won silver in Sochi.
Figure Skating—men’s long program (8 p.m. EST)
Hanyu may be the best male skater ever, but he may not be the best right now. He has been nursing a sore right ankle and Chen, two-time world champion Javier Fernández of Spain and Japan’s Shoma Uno figure to challenge him.
Freestyle Skiing—women’s slopestyle (8 p.m. EST)
Maggie Voisin was just 15 when she qualified for Sochi, the youngest U.S. Winter Olympian since speedskaters Kay Lunda and Connie Carpenter-Phinney in 1972. But she broke her right ankle during training and never made it to the starting line. This could be her year: She was second at the Olympic test event in PyeongChang in February 2016 and second at the U.S. trials.
Alpine Skiing—women’s Super-G (9 p.m. EST)
Vonn and Shiffrin could both win medals. Vonn took Super-G bronze at the 2010 Olympics and the ’15 worlds. Shiffrin, who is just finding her footing in the speed disciplines, took fourth at a World Cup race last season.
Saturday, Feb. 17
Men’s Hockey—Russia vs. U.S. (7:10 a.m. EST)
It may not be the Miracle on Ice, but the rivalry is still worth watching.
Freestyle Skiing—men’s slopestyle (8 p.m. EST)
In 2014, Joss Christensen, Gus Kenworthy and Nick Goepper gave the U.S. its third-ever Winter Olympic sweep. Can the Americans have similar success in Korea?
Alpine Skiing—men’s giant slalom (8:15 p.m. EST)
Ted Ligety, the first American man to win two gold medals in Alpine skiing (in the combined in 2006 and in the giant slalom in ’14), mounted two World Cup podiums before being sidelined by a midseason crash in 2016. This could instead be the moment for Austria’s Marcel Hirscher—the world’s best Alpine skier six years running—to seize his first Olympic title.
Sunday, Feb. 18
Figure Skating—ice dance, short dance (8 p.m. EST)
Sochi gold medalists Meryl Davis and Charlie White have retired, but U.S. couples Madison Chock and Evan Bates, Madison Hubbell and Zach Donohue, and Maia and Alex Shibutani are all contenders. The Shib Sibs won silver at the 2016 worlds and bronze in ’17. No U.S. brother-sister team has won a medal since pairs skaters Kitty and Peter Carruthers claimed silver in 1984. Chock and Bates are two-time world medalists too, and Hubbell and Donohue just beat both other duos at nationals.
Monday, Feb. 19
Figure Skating—ice dance, free dance (8 p.m. EST)
For a fourth straight Games the U.S. should glide away with at least one medal, but the favorites are 2010 champions Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir of Canada and two-time world champions Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron of France.
Freestyle Skiing—women’s halfpipe (8:30 p.m. EST)
Maddie Bowman, 24, from South Lake Tahoe, Calif., won the first Olympic gold in this event in Sochi, then had operations on both knees in back-to-back seasons. Her rival, France’s Marie Martinod, 33, took a five-year break from the sport, including having a daughter, before coming back for Sochi, where she took silver. Don’t count Bowman out; her bag of tricks includes back-to-back 900s and the first switch 900 ever performed by a female skier in competition.
Tuesday, Feb. 20
Figure Skating—women’s short program (8 p.m. EST)
Russians—i.e., Olympic Athletes from Russia—could sweep. The favorite, Yevgenia Medvedeva, 18, did not skate at the Russian championships due to lingering pain in her right foot—she broke it in November. But the team’s bench is deep: Medvedeva’s training partner Alina Zagitova, 15, won the Grand Prix Final in December. The U.S. is led by newly minted national champion Bradie Tennell, 19; Mirai Nagasu, 24; and 2017 national champ Karen Chen, 18.
Alpine Skiing—women’s downhill (9 p.m. EST)
This could be the last race of Vonn’s Olympic career. She won the downhill in 2010 but wasn’t able to defend her title in Sochi because of knee injuries. Last season she finished second in a World Cup race at the Jeongseon Alpine Centre—the Olympic venue.
Wednesday, Feb. 21
Bobsled—women’s final runs (6:40 a.m. EST)
Kaillie Humphries of Canada edged her training partner, Elana Meyers Taylor of the U.S., in Sochi, but Meyers Taylor is the reigning world champion. Another American, Jamie Greubel Poser, won the World Cup season title.
Freestyle Skiing—men’s halfpipe (9:30 p.m. EST)
Wise could repeat as Olympic champion, and then watch his sister Christy, 31, compete in the Paralympics a few weeks later. Christy was on a paddleboard in 2015 when the propeller of a speeding boat severed her right leg. An Air Force Academy graduate and C-130 pilot with tours in Afghanistan and Africa, she returned to the cockpit 18 months later. (She is one of six Air Force pilots with missing limbs.) Christy has created a foundation that helps impoverished young amputees acquire prosthetics.
Women’s Hockey—gold medal game (11:10 p.m. EST)
The U.S. and Canada have met in four of five Olympic finals, and it’s likely they will face off again in PyeongChang. Canada won in overtime in Sochi, but the U.S. beat Canada in the last four world championship finals.
Thursday, Feb. 22
Snowboarding—women’s Big Air final (7:30 p.m. EST)
The first medals in the new event will be awarded, and more than one could be draped around American necks. Anderson, who won the Olympic test event in slopestyle, is Team USA’s best bet to take two snowboard medals.
Figure Skating—women’s long program (8 p.m. EST)
If Medvedeva is 100%, she will win. If she is 90%, she will win. If not, though, the always upright Bradie Tennell—she had just two falls on jumping passes this season—will be right there, on her feet.
Friday, Feb. 23
Speedskating—men’s 1,000 meters (5 a.m. EST)
This may be the final Olympic race of Shani Davis’s career. He won the 1,000 in 2006 and ’10 and finished eighth as part of a disastrous U.S. speed skating showing in Sochi. Davis, 35, hasn’t won a World Cup 1,000 since March 2014.
Saturday, Feb. 24
Cross-country Skiing—men’s 50K mass start (Midnight EST)
The marathon of the Winter Games, Russia swept the podium in Sochi, but two of those skiers have been banned for doping.
Speedskating—men’s and women’s mass start (6 a.m. EST)
The fourth new event is not actually a debut. Mass start appeared on the program in Lake Placid in 1932. After three semifinals, 24 skaters will line up in the final.
Curling—women’s gold medal match (7:05 p.m. EST)
Per ardua ad astra is tattooed on the sliding foot of the skip of favored Canada. The motto of the Royal Canadian Air Force, it translates from Latin as “through adversity to the stars.” Rachel Homan’s late grandfather Gerry was a navigator with the RCAF and a lifelong curler who inspired her love of the sport. In the world rankings, it’s Canada first, Switzerland second and Russia third.
Bobsled—four-man, final runs (7:30 p.m. EST)
Steve Holcomb, who died of an overdose of prescription sleeping pills and alcohol in May, and his “Night Train” won gold in Vancouver for the first U.S. victory in four-man since 1948. In Sochi he added a bronze in four-man and another in two-man—the first two-man medal for the U.S. since ’52. In has been 19 years since Holcomb was not a member of the national team as either a pusher or driver. This year, the pilot of USA-1 is Codie Bascue, 23, of Whitehall, N.Y., who won the two-man at trials and was second in four-man.
Men’s Hockey—gold medal game (11:10 p.m. EST)
Canada claimed the last two gold medals, but with no NHL players, the favorite is Russia, with skaters from the KHL. Still, never, ever, count out the Finns and the Swedes.
Sunday, Feb. 25
Closing Ceremony (6 a.m. EST)
