There are about 2,950 athletes entered here in PyeongChang (PC). Of these 1,689 have never before competed at an Olympic Games.
This brings the total number of Olympians (since 1896) over a few landmarks. The following now assumes that all 1,689 new Olympians will compete in PC, which is probably not exactly the case.
The number of Winter Olympians will now top 20,000 for the first time, reaching about 20,705. So some new Olympian in PC will become the 20,000th Winter Olympian – who will it be? Actually, it will be very hard to say, because to date, there have currently been 19,016 Winter Olympians through 2014. So of the 1,014 new Winter Olympians likely to compete, it will be the 984th to enter the start gate. If you’d like to try to track that let us know.
Further the number of male Olympians, summer and winter, will top 100,000 for the first time, likely reaching about 100,997 if all 1,014 new male Olympians compete in PC. This is trackable and it will likely be possible to determine who is the 100,000th male Olympian. To date, there have been 99,983 male Olympians, so the 17th new male competitor to get to the starting line will be the 100,000th male Olympian.
Who will that be? This morning there were 4 mixed doubles curling matches, with 8 men competing. Six of those 8 men are new Olympians, bringing us to 99,989 male Olympians all-time, as of noontime, PyeongChang time..
Men’s normal hill ski jump qualifying takes place tonite. There will likely be 60 competitors (62 at Sochi in this event phase), and of those, about 20 will be new Olympians – as I write this the start list as not yet been announced.
The 11th new Olympian in the men’s normal hill ski jump qualifying tonite will become the 100,000th male Olympian. That should be relatively easy to determine as the ski jumpers go off one at a time. Once I get that start list, I’ll update this.