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Moments Large and Small in a Memorable Olympics

Members of The New York Times Olympic staff share their favorite moments from the Pyeongchang Games.

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Marit Bjoergen of Norway, center, was greeted by her teammates Ragnhild Haga, left, and Ingvild Flugstad Oestberg at the finish of the 4x5-kilometer relay.Credit...Antonio Bat/European Pressphoto Agency

Victor Mather: Four years ago, Norway had by all accounts a screamingly successful Winter Olympics, but failed to win the events it treasures the most: the cross country relays. Indeed, Norway failed even to win a medal, placing fourth in the men’s race and fifth in the women’s.

At the Pyeongchang Games, it appeared all might go wrong again. After one leg of the women’s relay, Norway was third, and after two it was fourth, 30 seconds back.

But Norway still had two aces to play. The first was Ragnhild Haga, the gold medalist in the 10-kilometer event. She stormed through the course and pulled within three seconds of the leaders.

Then she turned the race over to Marit Bjoergen, one of the century’s greatest athletes in any sport. Already a six-time gold medalist before these Games, Bjoergen had defied her 37 years by picking up a silver and a bronze in individual events in Pyeongchang. (She added an individual gold later.)

And the relay? She won it for Norway. Of course. And it certainly made the victory sweeter that the runner-up was Norway’s old rival, Sweden.

For good measure, Norway won the men’s race the next day, coming from behind again.

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Adam Rippon in the men's free skate. He finished 10th in the singles competition and helped the United States win a bronze medal in the team event.Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Karen Crouse: Mixed zones, those areas where reporters descend on athletes immediately after they’re done competing, are seldom places of high profundity. Imagine trying to hold a serious conversation in a packed subway car. But then along came the walking book of quotations known as Adam Rippon, whose repartee is sharper than his skate blades.

Rippon, who competed in the men’s and team figure skating events, had a dozen memorable quips and comebacks. After his free skate in the men’s singles, Rippon, one of two openly gay men on the United States Olympic team, was asked about the people back home who don’t embrace him.

“Haters are just fans in denial,” Rippon said, providing an answer, but more important, a mantra, for all of us who regularly put our work out there for public consumption.

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Xu Mengtao of China during the women's aerials. She did not reach the medal round.Credit...James Hill for The New York Times

James Hill: One night during the first week of competition, I had the chance to photograph the women’s aerials finals at Phoenix Snow Park.

It was my first visit to the venue, and the photo manager told me that during practice he allowed photographers to stand underneath the ramp off which the skiers launch themselves. Normally one has to stand to the side of the course or far below by the finish. This vantage point gave an entirely different view.

One cannot see the skiers approach, which focuses one’s attention. A speaker announces, “athlete on course,” and one listens attentively as the smooth sound of skis on snow becomes stronger and then, suddenly, the athletes are flying overhead.

As they take off, their skis carry a residue of snow from the ramps that disperses all around. Sometimes there is a lot of snow, giving the sense of skiers flying in a snowstorm. Sometimes there are just specks which, at night, dot the blackness like stars. As the skiers rotate, one can photograph them upside down or in some obtuse position that is both unfamiliar and wondrous to our eyes or, in this case, seeming to circle the earth like a satellite in the cosmos.

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Jingyu Lee and Yoonjung Park of the unified Korean hockey team took a lap around the ice after their final game of the Olympics.Credit...Hilary Swift for The New York Times

Motoko Rich: Losing all five of its games, the unified Korea women’s ice hockey team was pretty battered, not just on the ice, but by intense political and news media attention. Yet after the team’s final game, against Sweden, the players formed a circle in the middle of the rink and brought their sticks down in a resounding crack, while the crowd chanted, “We are one!”

Then the players did a skate around the perimeter to salute the fans as the theme song from the 1988 Seoul Games, “Hand in Hand,” blared across the arena. The last player on the ice was goalie Shin So-jung, who let in four goals that night. She left to a standing ovation from the crowd.

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Choi Min-jeong of South Korea after winning the 1,500-meter short-track speedskating race.Credit...Hilary Swift for The New York Times

John Branch: The first night of short-track speedskating was a hoot, an arena bursting with energy and a crowd of knowledgeable fans cheering one of South Korea’s favorite sports.

But you did not have to be in the arena to understand what short track means to the host country. During the last night of competition, I was on a high-speed train from Seoul to the Olympic city of Gangneung. My reserved seat in economy was behind a man traveling alone and next to a woman traveling with her child. I bemoaned my bad timing: I would not only miss being in the short-track arena but also would be nowhere near a television. Then I caught a glimpse of the man’s smartphone. He was watching the live broadcast. I turned to the woman. She was doing the same thing on her phone, her daughter leaning in to see, too.

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Aljona Savchenko and Bruno Massot of Germany after their stunning long program. Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Jere Longman: Aljona Savchenko and Bruno Massot of Germany, who were among the favorites in the pairs figure skating competition, fell to fourth after the short program when Massot made a jumping mistake. He seemed disconsolate, and gold seemed beyond reach.

But they rallied with a stunning performance in the long program. Afterward, having poured everything into the routine, Savchenko, who was competing in her fifth Olympics, collapsed to the ice. Massot went to his knees and hugged her. And they won the gold medal.

Until November, Massot’s eligibility to compete for Germany had been in doubt. He is a native of France who needed three tries to pass a written test to gain German citizenship. Germany’s president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, visited the skaters during the Games. Massot later confessed to a friend, “I couldn’t understand everything he said.”

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Ivett Toth during her sizzling, and chilly, tribute to AC/DC.Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Juliet Macur: After just a couple beats of the music playing in the Gangneung Ice Arena, I knew Ivett Toth of Hungary wasn’t skating to the same old songs. Nothing from “Carmen” or “Swan Lake.” Not one of those go-to figure skating songs that I’d heard about 1,143 times since covering my first Winter Games in 2002.

This was the first Olympics where skaters could perform to music with words, and Toth’s choice was classic — classic rock, that is.

Her music had the rafters shaking. It was AC/DC’s “Back in Black,” and Toth was dressed as a biker. She wore a sleeveless, studded black leather vest with a zipper up the front and an image of AC/DC’s lead guitarist, Angus Young, on the back. She also wore finger-less black gloves and black tights. It was clear that this 18-year-old was expressing herself and having so much fun, and it was heaven to see something so different.

As the music suggested, Toth rocked it. Half of the crowd clapped along as the song changed to AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck,” a staple of N.F.L. games. The other half of the crowd watched with jaws on the ground. I swear that I could see the judges growing pale.

Toth finished 23rd out of 30 skaters, but recorded her personal best score.

When Toth came out for her free skate two days later, though, and the first few notes started playing, it was clear that she had left her hard edge at home this time. She went with “Carmen.”

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Joe Ward, left, with Doug Mills, whom he calls one of his "heroes." Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

Joe Ward: Anytime you can start your workday on a chairlift with the Pulitzer Prize-winning White House photographer Doug Mills, you know it’s going to be a good morning. Wind chills of minus-20 and gusts of 60 m.p.h. only make the experience of working alongside one of your journalistic heroes all the more memorable.

Doug snapped the famous photograph of President George W. Bush being told about the attacks on the World Trade Center in a Florida classroom. The multitudes of people who admire Mills’s photographs don’t also get to experience his generosity and humor. Some days, more than others, you realize you’re lucky to be doing what you’re doing.

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Artur Nogal of Poland falling painfully early in the speedskating sprint.Credit...John Sibley/Reuters

David Segal: If Poland’s Artur Nogal ever has grandchildren and wants to tell them about his Olympic experience, it is going to be a very short story.

In the men’s 500-meter speedskating event, he lined up, crouched as he readied for the start gun and then sprang into a sprint. It lasted for two seconds. Nogal slipped and fell to the ice, his face of rictus of agony as he spun on his rear end.

If records were kept for “shortest amount of time in the Games when you were in contention,” this guy would be hard to beat.

He didn’t stay on the ground for long. While the athlete he was supposed to race flew around the track, Nogal got up and slowly started to skate again. Then something happened that was either amazing or inevitable. Either way, it was stirring and spoke to the deep empathy of the crowd, which recognized immediately that it had witnessed an athlete’s nightmare.

The audience applauded. It sounded nothing like the applause for Cha Min Kyu, a South Korean who ultimately won the silver and was rapturously cheered when he delivered the best time of the night, at least until a Norwegian bested him by a hundredth of a second. Instead this was the ovation of a crowd expressing its heartfelt condolences, or just saluting Nogal for years of training, and for having the grace and nerve to finish a race he had lost in an instant.

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Family and fans of Anna Gasser of Austria celebrate her win in the women's Big Air snowboarding final. Credit...Hilary Swift for The New York Times

Bedel Saget: As a visual journalist, I find it interesting that my favorite moment of the Pyeongchang Games was a strictly audible one. For the women’s big air final, I was shooting from a position where I could see all the spins and flips but not the scores or the landings, a crucial component in big air. (Ask the silver medalist, Jamie Anderson, who couldn’t hold onto first place after failing to land her “cab double cork 1080” in the final round.)

I followed as best as I could by using the reaction of the crowd after each jump. By the third and final round, I had a strong feeling that the Austrian Anna Gasser — the reigning world champion and favorite whom I’d followed for an entire year for one of our Olympic preview interactive graphics — would land somewhere on the podium.

The stadium was so quiet for this last and deciding jump, I sensed everyone could hear the rapid fire of my camera as Gasser flew past me, flipping twice and spinning three times on her cab double cork 1080. After she disappeared out of view, the exploding roar of the crowd told me that something special had just happened. Gasser had won the first gold medal in Olympic big air competition, and more important, this entire field of athletes had finally been able to reveal the progress and depth of women’s snowboarding. It was a stark contrast to the slopestyle final, in which the women had to scale back their runs because of dangerously high winds.

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Vice President Mike Pence of the United States and President Moon Jae-in of South Korea shared a laugh at the women's 500 meters short-track speedskating race. Credit...Julie Jacobson/Associated Press

Randal C. Archibold: In one night, I saw South Korea win its first gold medal, Vice President Mike Pence and his entourage push past me, and the North Korean cheerleading squad execute “the wave” with robotic precision.

Who knew short-track speedskating could deliver so much in one night?

It was a chance visit to the event, motivated by the simple urge to get out of the windowless office where I helped edit our coverage and to go see something. The other events I attended or covered could not match this one for its athletic and geopolitical resonance. So the first Olympic event I have ever attended will probably stay with me the longest.

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Who let this guy come to the top of the jump?Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

Doug Mills: Without a doubt, my pinch-me moment came when I was allowed to spend time up in the ski jumpers’ start house. This is a place I had never visited while photographing several other Games, and I had not seen many photos made from inside.

I would not have been allowed to show the reader the behind-the-scenes images without the support of the wonderful photo managers at that venue. It’s hard to describe how far up the start house is, but I know one thing: There is no way I could do what these Olympic athletes do.

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"As long as we can make people smile, we are happy," said one of the Norwegian men at the train station.Credit...Inyoung Kang

Inyoung Kang: I was waiting for the 8:24 train back to Seoul when I heard the two men coming — laughing, chattering, clanking. They were covered in Norwegian flags, from their glasses to their cowbells to their Viking plushies.

I gawked for a moment before asking if I could take their picture.

“Of course!” they said in unison, beaming and posing.

I snapped a photo and asked if they were in Pyeongchang to cheer for anyone in particular. In the station, I had met a Swede who had come to support his daughter, an Alpine skier.

“No, we are just fans,” one said. He gestured at his friend’s get-up. “We came here for fun. As long as we can make people smile, we are happy.”

The first Olympics I remember watching were the Nagano Games in 1998. As a child, I was fascinated by the sports, the teams and how the world seemed to come together and put aside its differences, if only for a little while. Now, 20 years later, I was in the country of my parents’ birth to cover my first Olympics. I have always felt a bit like an outsider — a minority at home or a foreigner with an American accent here. But that night on the train platform, on my 20th visit to Korea, the world felt a little smaller. I thanked the Norwegians, and we parted ways.

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At the finish of the team sprint, Jessie Diggins made one small slide for herself and one giant stretch for Team U.S.A., clinching its first gold in cross country.Credit...Dmitri Lovetsky/Associated Press

Talya Minsberg: “Because Minnesota.” That’s a reason I was assigned to follow the United States women’s cross country team throughout the Winter Games. Both Jessie Diggins and I grew up in Minnesota and spent hours racing around golf courses in the Twin Cities.

Diggins and the other American women had a real shot at winning a medal in cross-country skiing — the first for the United States since Bill Koch took home a silver in 1976.

On Feb. 10, she finished in the fifth in the skiathlon. On Feb. 13, she finished sixth in the sprint classic. Two days later, she finished fifth in the 10-kilometer freestyle, just 3.3 seconds away from winning a medal. And when the stands were the fullest, on Feb. 17, the American team of Sophie Caldwell, Sadie Bjornsen, Kikkan Randall and Diggins came in fifth in the 4x5-kilometer relay.

When asked if she still thought she could win a medal, after so many narrow misses, Diggins flashed a megawatt smile and said, “If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here.”

On Wednesday morning, the day of the team sprint relay, my editor sent me a message: “Want to chase cross country one more time?”

The race turned out to be one that deserves to be replayed in Olympic highlight reels for years. Diggins and Randall didn’t just win a medal. They took the gold.

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The Pyeongchang crowds approached the Olympics with a mix of enthusiasm and fascination. Credit...Hilary Swift for The New York Times

Hilary Swift: One of my favorite days at the Olympics was the qualifying runs for women’s big air snowboarding. It was probably the warmest day I can remember, and so a lot of spectators came to the event.

My colleague Doug Mills was at the top of the jump getting pictures of skiers coming down, so I was free to roam the crowd and look for features. To me, this photo speaks to what the Olympic experience is like for the majority of people who cycle through venues. You may not be an athlete or a volunteer, but you’re supporting your country’s athletes and others from all over the world.

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The media buses at the Olympics were like moving living rooms with live coverage of the Games.Credit...Hilary Swift for The New York Times

Andrew Keh: A bus full of journalists was chugging down a busy road last Sunday when the driver swerved onto the left shoulder, put the vehicle in park and craned his neck for a better view of the giant television propped above his head.

Right then, Lee Sang-hwa of South Korea was inching toward the starting line in the women’s 500-meter speedskating event. Lee charged around the ice, only to finish 0.39 seconds behind the eventual gold medalist, Nao Kodaira of Japan. As Lee broke down in tears, the driver tapped the steering wheel, let out a disappointed grunt and started the bus again.

Bus drivers were among the countless workers here doing thankless jobs to keep the Olympics running. But every so often, when a Korean athlete was about to perform, patriotism (or perhaps mere curiosity) compelled them to pause for a few moments. The passengers never seemed to mind.

Two days later, a bus driver on a different route pulled over to watch the final seconds of the South Korean women’s curling win over the United States team. Some passengers clapped as the women, unexpected stars of the Games, celebrated on screen. The driver laughed out loud.

“Wow, they really are good,” he said to no one in particular. Then he yanked the bus back into busy traffic.

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Michelle Gisin of Switzerland was a friendly bus companion one day and a gold medal winner in the Alpine combined a few days later. Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

Tara Parker-Pope: For me, the best part of the Olympics happened between competitions, when I would occasionally run into athletes or their families in a casual setting. I struck up a conversation with the Swiss skier Michelle Gisin on a bus — about her two siblings, who also ski (her sister Dominique won a gold medal in Sochi), and how her parents worry about them getting hurt.

Gisin was charming and humble. We traded pins, and I wished her luck. A week later she stormed to a gold medal in the Alpine combined. At my hotel, I ran into 17 relatives of the snowboarder Jamie Anderson a few hours before she won the gold medal in the slopestyle competition. “You know Jamie?” her father asked, almost surprised at how famous his daughter had become.

It’s an incredible gathering of athletes and families, all so passionate about what they do, and you find these athletes often are just normal people doing exceptional things.

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Two old friends, Matthew Futterman, left, and Jason Albert, tried to figure out where more than a quarter-century had gone since the last time they saw each other: on their college graduation day.Credit...Gabby Naranja

Matthew Futterman: The Olympic Games are supposed to be about bringing people together.

As a student at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., I spent the better part of my junior and senior years sharing a rundown house with a great friend named Jason Albert. We called him “J-bert” back then. A lover of the outdoors, he was the guy who, on a clear night, would take his sleeping bag and crash in the middle of the softball field because, well, why not?

We spent endless hours on beat-up couches, contemplating problems large and small — Iraq, what we were going to do after graduating, girls who (rightfully, probably) found us unworthy.

On graduation day, we bro-hugged and said something like, “See you soon.”

We didn’t. That was nearly 27 years ago. There is no good explanation other than life, which carried him to Bend, Ore., and me to the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

The day before the Olympics started, as I was looking at my phone and hurrying to attend to a story, I nearly walked head-on into a correspondent for the great Nordic sports website fasterskier.com — my old friend and housemate Jason.

In that moment, and then at a couple cross country races where we leaned on a fence and watched the competition, we were right back on those couches — thankfully, without very much to complain about.

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From left to right, Mina Kim, Robert Fissel and the brothers Keun Hwan and Dong-hyung Lee taking in a bobsled race. "It's so fast," Dong-hyung Lee said. Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Chang W. Lee: This is my favorite picture from these Olympics.

It’s so hard to find a new way to illustrate many Olympic sports, especially bobsled.

One day as I walked down from the top of the sledding hill, I could barely see anything. There were spots where I could see some parts of the track, with the Olympic Village in the background or flags nearby, but they didn’t make for very good pictures.

I kept walking down. Still, nothing much. The competition went on, and I didn’t have a picture yet. I heard the crowds cheering, but there was no bobsled in sight. When I had nearly reached the bottom, I saw a gap in the course. I peeked into it. I tried looking for several different groups of fans, but I didn’t see much in the way of reactions.

Then, there we go. I made the best picture of sliding sports I have ever seen, even without a bobsled.

Three fans made all the noise in the grandstand next to the finish line. Just three fans. You could not help but hear their cheering, because just about everyone else in the area was stunned silent.

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Ester Ledecka of the Czech Republic stood stunned after winning the women’s super-G Alpine race.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

Bill Pennington: The outcome of the women’s super-G Alpine race had been decided about 10 minutes earlier. Or so it seemed. The top 20 ranked skiers had already finished, which in nearly every case would mean that the fastest time had already been recorded.

Then Ester Ledecka of the Czech Republic, the 26th racer to leave the start gate, dashed down the hill. When she came to a stop and turned her eyes to the scoreboard, she stood motionless, her mouth agape. There was a No. 1 next to her name.

Other racers and the audience were as stunned as Ledecka. But not three Czech fans in the grandstand. They began yelling, stomping their feet and shaking cowbells.

Ledecka was sure it was a mistake. Much of the crowd thought the same thing, and a confused quiet enveloped the finish area.

But there was no error, and bit by bit, the three Czech fans had a contagious effect on those around them. The cheering built slowly until it was a roaring ovation. It almost, but not completely, drowned out the three fans who first knew the truth — and celebrated the capricious spirit of the Olympics.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section B, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: Moments & Memories Large & Small. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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