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2018 Winter Olympics: Important Live-Stream Details and Quick Pyeongchang Guide
February 8, 2018
The 2018 Winter Olympics will officially begin on Friday, February 9, in Pyeongchang, South Korea, with the opening ceremony taking place. However, qualifying for certain events has already gotten under way. Events will last until Sunday, February 25, the date of the closing ceremony, beginning at 11 a.m. GMT (6 a.m. ET).
The action will take place at 12 different venues across two sites.
Events will be televised on NBC and NBCSN, with NBCOlympics.com providing full viewing details.
Here are the live-streaming links: NBCOlympics.com, NBC Sports App, BBC Sport, Eurosport Player.
Pyeongchang is "about 80 miles (125 kilometers) east of Seoul and about 60 miles south of the Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Korea," according to CNN's Robert Jimison.
The opening ceremony will start at The Pyeongchang Olympic Stadium on Friday, with live streaming of events slated to begin at 11 a.m. GMT (6 a.m. ET).
Some events will have already begun the day before, with curling and ski jumping set to start. Meanwhile, preliminary qualifying for certain races began on Wednesday, February 7.
Once all the events have begun, different disciplines will be watched at seven different centres in the Pyeongchang Mountain Cluster. A further five centres will house sporting action at the Gangneung Coastal Cluster.
Full details of each venue are available, per the Games' official website.
As many as 92 countries will be represented in South Korea, with athletes set to participate in 15 different events, comprised of seven sporting disciplines, to win up to 102 medals. Among those events, figure skating, ski jumping and the bobsled should be some of the most viewed and keenly contested.
Four-time bobsled world champion Elana Meyers Taylor described the sport as the "most euphoric thing," according to Olympics.org. The four-man event may prove to be the standout spectacle, with James Gill of the Radio Times naming Team Great Britain as prime contenders.
There are also new events for this year's Games, including Alpine skiing and snowboard. Skeleton will also be a feature, a sport requiring its competitors to execute headfirst slides on a slim sled down the ice.
A full schedule for each event is available on the official website.
Some Russian athletes may be involved, after bans previously received by 28 competitors for alleged participation in suspected state-sponsored doping during the 2014 Sochi Games were lifted on appeal by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, based on "insufficient evidence," per Olympics.org (h/t CNN's James Masters and Euan McKirdy).
However, it is "not immediately clear if any of the 28 would seek to take part in Pyeongchang. To be eligible to compete in South Korea, they would need to be cleared by the IOC Invitation Review Panel and subsequently selected to join the team of 169 Russian athletes competing as neutrals," per Masters and McKirdy.
Norway, Germany, Canada and Team USA should still be among the most successful nations on the medal table once this year's Games progress.