Kiszla: Even the snow was fake. Did the Winter Olympics sacrifice its soul in the name of money?

PYEONGCHANG –These were the Winter Olympics where the snow was fake and the athletic thrills were real.

The No. 1 sport of the Games is dream-weaving. In the 21st century, the original Olympic motto of “citius, altius, fortius” has been transformed to world peace, fair play, enduring legacy.

It’s all a grand illusion.

The U.S. Army chaplain stood at the top of Olympic grandstands, bitter cold buffeting his face, mucus dripping from his nose. But Tom Helms was on a mission. He and his son unfurled an American flag, the stars and stripes, big and beautiful and 15 feet wide. Helms was not only showing the colors, but sending a message to Kim Jung-un and North Korea, whose border was 60 miles away from the ski venue at Yongpyong Ski Resort.

“The Olympics are an incredible opportunity for athletes from around the world to participate in freedom,” said Helms, stationed at Camp Humphreys near the city of Pyeongtaek in central South Korea. “It’s my great hope that everybody that comes to the Olympics, including the athletes and cheerleaders from North Korea, can all breathe free air down here.”

Competitors from the United States and Russia exchange fist bumps at the finish line. But, in the crowd, there’s a whole lot of passionate flag-waving. Maybe nothing else more concisely illustrates that the Winter Olympics are incapable of changing the world. For 17 days, the most the Games can do is put the world’s problems on hold.

The roar of the crowd at the Final Four or Super Bowl might be louder, but there’s no bigger sports thrill than an Olympic thrill. It was pure goose bumps when Ester Ledecka, the Czech snowboarder trained by a coach from Steamboat, crossed the finish line on borrowed skis in the super-G, peered at the scoreboard and saw her name next to a big, red No. 1.

She thought the result was certainly a mistake. But the magic was real. A snowboarder had beaten the world’s best skiers at their own game. What’s more, on Saturday, I watched Ledecka complete what might be the most unlikely double in Olympic history, finishing first in parallel giant slalom on her board without ever being seriously challenged.

Before departing the Games with more gold than Mikaela Shiffrin and Lindsey Vonn combined, Ledecka endorsed this tweet: “Austria: We are the best in super-G! Swiss: No, we are the best! USA: Shut up, we are the best! Italia: Mamma mia! Ledecka: Hold my beer … and my snowboard.”

When athletes from the two Koreas marched together under the same flag during opening ceremonies, there were tears of joy. Moon Jae-in, the president of South Korean, sold the Games as a new chance for dialogue and reconciliation.

Ask anyone with a meaningful history on the Korean peninsula, and talk of unification is often met with a skeptical eye roll.

“I have been to the Congo and many countries were bad, very bad, but when I went to North Korea in 1996, it was almost impossible to comprehend the conditions that the people live under,” said Christian Wyss, a Swiss photographer. “After the photos I took were published, North Korea called me. I was told I could never return to that country, unless I wanted to be killed.”

The politics of North and South make reunification seem a bridge too far. But deciding who’s in charge wouldn’t be nearly the biggest challenge in melding the two countries.

“The topic of unification is a loaded one, because it is so complicated. I think in our deepest desires, all Koreans want eventual unification,” said Tommy Im, a proud Korean that lives in Denver.

“But practically, I think the vast majority of South Koreans do not want unification, given the immense costs, socially, culturally and economically, which would be the burden of integrating North Korea into the 21st century. I think unification is on the horizon. A peaceful and gradual unification is ideal, but both Koreas are so apart in their approach to government, foreign policy and capitalism, given each country’s unique history since World War II. What cannot be ignored, however, is North Korea’s record on human rights. Atrocities are committed every day, atrocities comparable to Nazi Germany.”

Snowboarder Vic Wild grew up in White Salmon, Wash., and competed in the 2010 Winter Games for the United States. A year later, frustrated by the lack of funding for his sport and in love, he moved to Russia, married Olympic athlete Alena Zavarzina, renounced his U.S. citizenship and won two gold medals representing Russia at the 2014 Sochi Games.

Although clean, Wild got slimed by the doping scandal that engulfed the Russian Olympic program, and was uncertain he would be allowed to compete in PyeongChang until a week prior to the opening ceremony.

“That definitely put some gray hairs on my head,” Wild said Saturday, after getting eliminated from medal contention in an early heat of parallel giant slalom.

When he visits the United States, people in his home town crack jokes at the expense of the American that crossed over to Vladimir Putin’s side. The the buy-the-world-a-Coke spirit of the Games can fizzle quickly. When Wild repeatedly reached out to the International Olympic Committee to clear his name of doping suspicions during the past 18 months, he could not even get any official to return his phone calls.

“It hurts the Olympic spirit,” Wild said. “I feel like I’ve got the Olympics’ back. And they don’t have my back … It kind of makes me feel like I’m, in a sense, just another unit for them to create profits off. I don’t know. That’s kind of harsh to say. It just feels like that. I wouldn’t say that’s true. At least it feels that way.”

While the Olympics purport to put athletes first, it seems to Wild that too often there’s actually an adversarial relationship between the IOC and the skiers, snowboarders and skaters that put on the show at the Winter Games.

“I think all (Olympic) athletes should create a union, like in football, baseball and basketball,” Wild said. “We should all work together. I think there’s a lot of profit going on here that doesn’t make it to the people that need it.”

South Korea is nothing short of a technological wonder, backed by a resilient heart. On a peninsula torn apart by some of the strongest geopolitical forces on earth, this country of 51 million people is the home to skiing robots and Mensa-level smart phones and automobiles that now rival anything manufactured in arch-rival Japan.

Here’s the definition of unlimited ambition: South Korea brought the Winter Olympics to a place with no snow. Yes, when the wind howls in PyeongChang, it feels like Siberia. Winter here is not only harsh, it’s arid. More than 90 percent of the snow in every venue, from the snowboard halfpipe to the cross-country course, was man-made, not God-made. That might make for a hard, uniform surface for the competitors, but it stinks for the growth of a winter sports culture.

The truth is, South Korea constructed winter for television. And, if you ask me, it felt all wrong. The song that opened the local TV broadcast of action from the Games was often “All the Things That I’ve Done” by The Killers, with Brandon Flowers crooning: “I’ve got soul, but I’m not a soldier.”

It pains me to say it, but these were the Winter Games without soul. The hosts were friendly and efficient. Those stuffed white tigers were beyond cute.

But on the night I went to the medals plaza, when Colorado snowboarder Arielle Gold went to collect her bronze, it had all the ambiance of picking up a lawnmower from the customer-service desk at Home Depot. At Phoenix Snow Park, where snowboarder Red Gerard from Silverthorne was golden, owners of local ski shops were outraged because the resort was shut down for Games in mid-Januray and won’t open again until next season. The $75 million stadium built for the opening and closing ceremonies will be torn down, which I guess is better than letting an Olympic venue rot, as we have seen happen in Brazil.

While eating a bowl of barbecue beef and rice in a local diner, I struck up a conversation with Reto Rey, who wasn’t certain if he was supposed to order food at the counter or cool his jets until a waiter arrived. Rey was visiting PyeongChang on a scouting mission, as a representative of Sion, Switzerland, which is considering a bid for the 2026 Games.

How can you have the Winter Olympics in a place where there is no snow and people don’t like skiing? “The Olympics has to get back to its roots,” Rey said.

For the Games to be a true celebration of winter, the IOC can’t award the Olympics to anyplace with a spare $10 or $50 billion to build a gigantic plastic snow globe.

Nevertheless, the next Winter Olympics will be held in Beijing, which makes about as much sense as going to an Italian restaurant and eating a burrito. Or as Chris Knight, the coach of Lindsey Vonn, so succinctly put it: “They haven’t even built the Olympic ski venues in China.”

World peace, fair play, enduring legacy.

Those are lofty, laudable goals.

First, the Winter Olympics might try fixing the Winter Olympics.

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Billy Graham has come home: The family greets hearse at his Charlotte library

Billy Graham has come home.

A hearse carrying the body of the Charlotte-born evangelist arrived at the library bearing his name Saturday afternoon. It was part of a 10-car motorcade, complete with police escort, that departed from his ministry’s training center in Asheville a few hours earlier.

“My father made me promise long ago that we would take him back to Charlotte after he died,” Graham’s son, Franklin, tweeted from the motorcade.

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Along the 130-mile route, the motorcade was met by Billy Graham admirers who lined up by the hundreds, even by the thousands, along mountain town roads, interstate highways and Charlotte city streets. They waved Bibles, took pictures with their phones, held up “Thank You” signs, and hoisted American and Christian flags. One man near Marion even played bagpipes to honor the man who began life on a dairy farm and went on to become a globe-trotting preacher and pastor to U.S. presidents.

“He was a powerful speaker who made you pay attention,” said Steven Culpepper, who waited for the motorcade at the corner of Stonewall Avenue and South Boulevard in Charlotte. He was joined by wife Carol and 13-year-old son, Ethan.

“We believe in the Jesus message he was preaching,” said Carol, who described her nights singing in the choir at Graham’s 1996 crusade in Charlotte as “a little bit like heaven on earth.”

Also eager to witness Graham’s return to Charlotte was Kristin Whittaker. The 24-year-old production worker for NASCAR said she was there to salute this historical figure whose crusades had shaped some of her older family members.

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“I grew up going on field trips to his library,” she said. “And I want to be able to say that I was part of this.”

When the motorcade reached the Billy Graham Library, it was welcomed by family members, including Franklin, his four siblings, and Jean Ford of Charlotte, Billy Graham’s younger sister and only surviving sibling. They all walked silently behind the casket as grandson Will Graham and other pall bearers carried it into the library, where a private service was planned.

On Monday and Tuesday, shuttles will transport members of the public to the library grounds, to view Graham’s closed plywood casket. It will sit in his boyhood home, which was restored and relocated.

Funeral and burial services will be held next Friday on the library grounds for Graham, who finished in Gallup Poll’s annual list of most admired men a record 61 times.

President Donald Trump is expected to be among the 2,300 invited guests, all gathered under a massive tent in the library parking lot.

‘Overwhelming’ support

The day began in Asheville, at the Billy Graham Training Center at the Cove.

Some rose early for the chance to be among the first admirers to pay their respects. That included Dawn Capps, 47, who got up at 5:30 a.m. in West Asheville to take a streetside position in downtown Black Mountain “just to pay tribute to his life’s work furthering the gospel of Jesus Christ. He molded an example of what I would wish to be like: his humility, his kindness.”

Franklin Graham, in another tweet written along the route, called the turnout of well-wishers “overwhelming.”

“The outpouring of love we are seeing as we travel from Asheville to Charlotte via the motorcade with my father @BillyGraham is overwhelming. People lining the streets, the overpasses,” the younger Graham wrote. “Thank you.”

To many in western North Carolina, Graham, who was 99 when he died last Wednesday morning at his longtime home in Montreat, was a neighbor.

Hundreds of people lined the streets of downtown Black Mountain as Graham left his beloved Blue Ridge Mountains haven for the last time.

Only the sounds of clicking cell phones, the whir of two helicopters circling overhead and a few “thank yous” broke the silence as a procession of two black Cadillac hearses and a half-dozen black SUVs moved down East State Street toward Interstate 40.

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Mourners lined Hwy 70 through town to see the procession as it made its way to Charlotte. John D. Simmonsjsimmons@charlotteobserver.com

“Millions of people would love to be here right now but can’t,” a woman in the crowd whispered to her companions as a State Highway Patrol escort of eight motorcycles came into view. “And here we are, just (living) 15 minutes away. That’s huge, ain’t it?”

The gathering crowd held mostly local residents, but Ann Lyons had flown in from Texas for the procession.

Her minister grandfather had known Graham, and the family has deep roots in Montreat, the small town in a mountain cove where the Grahams had lived for more than 60 years.

“Montreat’s a special place,” Lyons said. “You can still feel that small-town feeling.”

Lindsay Higgins had lived just a few doors down from Graham since moving to Montreat from San Diego three years ago. She never got to meet the famous evangelist as his health declined, but said it was “special just knowing he was nearby.

“It’s very sad,” said Higgins, 33. “You can definitely feel it in Montreat. Just knowing that he’s not here — there aren’t enough people like him in the world, so it’s really sad.”

Lynda Davis, 69, a former housekeeper for Graham gospel singer George Beverly Shea, sat with a hand-lettered, neon-yellow sign beside her folding chair. “Well done thou good and faithful servant,” it said of the man Davis calls “our Mr. Billy.”

Near Hickory, people waiting for the motorcade parked their cars and trucks off Hwy. 321, and lined up or sat along the road. They waved Bibles and signs. Some positioned themselves along an overpass, hoisting large American and Christian flags.

Others also lined up along an overpass on Morehead Street in Charlotte to view the procession.

Familiar sites

The motorcade went past sites that had been special in Graham’s life.

They included the former site of the Black Mountain Drug Store, where Graham used to ride his horse. And the town’s old train station, where Graham would board to get to Washington or New York. Then, from those cities, he’d fly on to crusades around the world.

In Charlotte, it passed the church he and his family attended when he was a youngster. The building at the corner of East Boulevard and South Boulevard is now occupied by Grace Covenant Church.

But when “Billy Frank” got his first religious education there, it was white-columned Chalmers Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church. Born in 1918, he was a member of the graduating class of the church’s Beginner’s Department in 1924.

Many honors

Saturday’s procession marked the start of nearly a week of mourning for Graham.

After the Monday-Tuesday viewing in the old Graham homestead, ceremonies will be held later in the week that are designed to echo other highlights in Graham’s life and career.

On Wednesday and Thursday, his body will lie in honor in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington. It’s a city Graham visited often over the years: to say prayers at presidential inaugurations, to offer solace in times of national crisis and to receive honors from Congress and the president.

Graham’s funeral service will be at noon Friday on the library grounds. About 2,300 invited guests will gather under a massive tent meant to recall Graham’s 1949 crusade in Los Angeles. It was that eight-week event – held under two circus tents that came to be called the “canvas cathedral” – that first brought him to the nation’s attention. It drew about 350,000 people and reporters flocked in to cover it for their newspapers and radio stations.

At Friday’s funeral, Franklin Graham, who now leads the Charlotte-based Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, will speak along with his four siblings.

Former President George W. Bush, meanwhile, plans to visit the library on Monday to pay tribute to Graham, who “changed my life,” Bush wrote in a Wall Street Journal column published after Graham’s death.

Billy Graham and his longtime crusade choir director, Cliff Barrows, mapped out the order of the funeral, including favorite hymns, years ago, said a spokesman for the BGEA.

Friday’s funeral service will be followed by a private burial. Graham will be laid to rest on the library grounds, at the foot of a cross-shaped walkway.

He’ll be buried next to Ruth, his wife of 64 years, who died in 2007.

His grave marker will read: “Billy Graham, Preacher of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

It will also include a Bible citation: “John 14:6.”

That verse reads: “Jesus told him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’ ”

More chances to say goodbye

▪ Monday and Tuesday, from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., shuttle buses will transport people to the Charlotte library grounds. There, they’ll stand in line outside to view Graham’s closed casket in his boyhood home, which has been restored and relocated. Those wanting to view Graham’s casket in his family homestead at the Billy Graham Library will be shuttled from two off-site locations: the parking lots at the Operation Christmas Child warehouse, 7100 Forest Point Blvd. in south Charlotte, and from the Charlotte Valet Business Lot 2 at 5601 Wilkinson Blvd. at Charlotte Douglas International Airport.

▪ On Wednesday and Thursday, thousands are expected to file into the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, where Graham’s body will lie in honor.

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