Sunday, February 25, 2018

Day 17 and Closing Ceremony

































Americans Jessica Diggins, Sadie Bjornsen, Rose Frankowski and Caitlin Patterson finished 7th, 17th, 21st and 26th respectively in women's Cross Country skiing - 30KM Mass Start.

Final Medal Count

Norway 14 gold, 14 silver, 11 bronze - 39 total
Germany 14 gold, 10 silver, 7 bronze - 31 total
Canada 11 gold, 8 silver, 10 bronze - 29 total
USA 9 gold, 8 silver, 6 bronze - 23 total
Netherlands 8 gold, 6 silver, 6 bronze - 20 total



Closing Ceremony summary:

Performances by K pop artists EXO, CL and appearances by DJ Raiden and Martin Garrix highlight the Closing Ceremony in Pyeongchang, South Korea. There was a performance by a 13 year old Korean guitarist Yang Tae Hwan who played from "Winter" from The Four Seasons and 11 year old Oh Yeon-joon sung the Olympic Hymn. CL sang The Baddest Female and EXO sang "Growl" with 43 dancers in the background. The ceremony reflected on South Korean dance, boundaries between life and death, remembrance and technological "snowflakes" that extinguished the Olympic Flame.

Also during the ceremony drones made the Pyeongchang mascot and a heart in the air above the stadium. There was a tribute to "Beijing 2022". At the end of the closing ceremony, all of the athletes were dancing on the floor of the stadium as NBC cut to Mike Tirico.

NBC started the ceremony at about 8:30 pm and ended at 10:30 pm, even though NBC's coverage started at 7:30 pm with "Olympic Gold" a review of the Pyeongchang Games.
This was the most technological opening and closing ceremonies I have ever seen. I love high tech ceremonies. It was hosted on NBC by Terry Gannon, Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir. They did a much better job of not talking over the ceremony.
Overall, a great ceremony and in my opinion, NBC did a better job broadcasting the closing ceremony than the opening ceremony. I was up at 6 am and streamed the closing ceremonies on NBCOlympics.com. The uncut version lasted 2 hours and 7 minutes. There was several commercial interruptions though and NBC's Terry Gannon admitted that the entire ceremony would not be shown but we could all watch the uncut version on Monday morning. My solution for NBC. Show it live at 6am, and then show it taped at 8pm. I will be reviewing the games over the next several days on my last Pyeongchang post.


Photos credit: Getty Images, UPI and other media sources. For blog use only.

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