(PyeongChang G-100) Countdown to PyeongChang Winter Games reaches century mark

SEOUL, Oct. 29 (Yonhap) -- The countdown to the first Winter Olympics in South Korea will reach the century mark Wednesday, with the east coast host city of PyeongChang ratcheting up its preparations and homegrown athletes chasing a record number of medals. PyeongChang, some 180 kilometers east of Seoul in Gangwon Province, won the bid to host the 2018 Winter Olympics in July 2011. The competition will be held from Feb. 9 to 25 next year under the slogan "Passion. Connected." PyeongChang 2018 will be the first Olympics in South Korea since the 1988 Seoul Summer Games. A dozen venues in PyeongChang and its sub-host cities of Gangneung and Jeongseon will stage seven sports across 15 disciplines. The PyeongChang Organizing Committee for the 2018 Olympic & Paralympic Winter Games (POCOG) estimates 95 countries will send about 6,500 athletes and officials to take part in its Olympics. They will vie for 102 gold medals, a record for a Winter Games. PyeongChang won its Winter Games bid on its third try. It lost to Vancouver for the 2010 Olympics and then to Sochi for the 2014 competition. PyeongChang finally beat out Munich, Germany, and Annecy, France, for the 2018 Olympics in an International Olympic Committee (IOC) vote in 2011. The 12 venues are all located within 30 minutes of each other, and it's the compact venue concept that helped PyeongChang win over IOC members. The PyeongChang Mountain Cluster will be home to Alpensia Biathlon Centre, Cross-Country Skiing Centre, Ski Jumping Centre, Sliding Centre, Bokwang Snow Park and Yongpyong Alpine Centre. Venues in Gangneung are some 20 kilometers east of the PyeongChang Mountain Cluster, and facilities there are Gangneung Curling Centre, Gangneung Hockey Centre, Gangneung Ice Arena, Gangneung Oval and Kwandong Hockey Centre. Jeongseon Alpine Centre is the lone venue in Jeongseon, about 20 kilometers south of PyeongChang. Six of the 12 venues are being constructed for the Olympics, while six existing facilities will be refurbished for the competition. The organizers are spending about 872 billion won (US$772.6 million) on venue construction. Gangneung Ice Arena, the venue for short track and figure skating, and Gangneung Oval, which will hold speed skating races, have already staged international and domestic competitions. Other venues have staged several Olympic test events in sports, such as snowboarding, bobsleigh, skeleton, biathlon, ski jumping and curling. South Korea has set out to collect up to 20 medals at PyeongChang 2018, including eight gold, and crack the top five in the medal race. At the 2014 Sochi Winter Games, South Korea grabbed three gold, three silver and two bronze medals to rank 13th. South Korea's best Winter Games performance came at Vancouver in 2010, when it won six gold medals and hauled in a record 14 medals total to finish fifth. All 26 Winter Olympic titles by South Korea have come from ice events -- short track, speed skating and figure skating. South Korea is once again expected to earn most of its medals from ice, while eyeing stronger performances in sliding events, such as skeleton and bobsleigh. Representing the PyeongChang Olympics will be a white tiger named Soohorang. A white tiger is a mythological guardian in Korean folklore and is considered sacred. "Sooho" means protection in Korean, and "rang" comes from the middle letter of "ho-rang-i," the Korean word for tiger. PyeongChang's torch relay is set to begin Wednesday, timed with the start of the 100-day countdown, after it was lit in Greece, the birthplace of the modern Olympics. The route will cover 2,018 kilometers -- the same number as the year in which the Olympics is taking place -- by plane, ship, train, sailboat, robot, cable car, bike and even zip line. The torch will travel through nine provinces, eight major cities, and 151 counties and districts. The relay will take place under the slogan, "Let Everyone Shine," a nod to the Olympic flame and PyeongChang's hopes of bringing the world together. The torch was built to withstand changing weather conditions during the relay. The combustion compartment with four separate walls prevents winds from blowing out the entire flame. A pentagon-shaped hole in the bottom will help drain water out of the torch in rainy conditions. And a three-layered umbrella type cover will protect the flame against snow and wind. The torch's white color was inspired by traditional Korean white porcelain and also by snow and ice, two major symbols of the Winter Olympics. The five-angled shape in the middle of the torch's cap represents "the spirit of sports, which connects races, nations, religions, genders, cultures and the five continents around the world, uniting them with passion." PyeongChang also unveiled its medals last month, its design inspired by the Korean alphabet hangeul. Gold, silver and bronze medals, designed by local industrial designer Lee Suk-woo, feature hangeul consonants on their bodies. Those consonants are "ㅍ, ㅊ, ㄷ, ㅇ, ㄱ, ㄹ, ㅁ," representing the Korean words for the PyeongChang Winter Olympics. They were written and stretched in 3-D and formed together in a cylinder shape. PyeongChang's organizing committee said the medals were also inspired by the texture of tree trunks, as trees represent the work put into developing Korean culture and the Olympic Games. Each medal is 92.5 millimeters wide, 109 mm long, and between 4.4 mm and 9.42 mm thick. The gold medal weighs 586 grams, the silver 580 g and the bronze 493 g. Compared with the previous Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, in 2014, PyeongChang's gold and silver medals are heavier, and bronze medal is lighter. The gold and silver medals for PyeongChang are 99.9 percent silver, and the gold medal is plated with 6 g of gold. The bronze medal is made of red brass. PyeongChang said it will create 259 sets of the medals. Of them, 222 of them will be awarded to the medal winners at the Olympics, and five sets will be set aside in case of ties. The IOC will retain 25 sets for display overseas, and seven other sets will be exhibited in South Korea. jeeho@yna.co.kr (END)