Once again, the Olympics are upon us. I don’t watch many sports but I have tuned-in to watch the Olympics ever since I can remember. In fact, I can recall viewing bits of the 1976 summer games held in Montréal and being disappointed when the United States boycotted the Moscow-hosted edition in 1980.

While I casually collected the U.S. stamps released for those two Olympic years, by the time of the 1984 winter games I was philatelically “all in”. I designed my own cachets for not only the first day covers of the stamps (different designs for blocks and singles) but also for the special postmarks available from the post offices along the torch relay route and for the various venues themselves. I began collecting Olympic memorabilia and amassed a great amount of Lake Placid 1980 souvenir magazines, clothing, even ticket stubs. When Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner were forced to withdraw from the gold medal round of the pairs figure skating due to Gardner’s groin injury, I wrote them a condolence letter and received a reply back. That was really the peak of my Olympic collecting activities, although I did dabble every four years until my first real break from stamps around 200o or 2001 — a philatelic hiatus that lasted until shortly after I moved to Thailand permanently in 2015. Sadly, that collection remained in the U.S. and is now gone.

I still get excited when the Olympics come around and, since Lake Placid, I prefer the Winter Olympics more than the Summer. The 2018 edition — the XXIII Olympic Winter Games (Les XXIIIes Jeux olympiques d’hiver in French and 제23회 동계 올림픽 in Hangul, pronounced Je-isipsamhoe Donggye Ollimpik) — are being held from February 9 through the 25 in Pyeongchang County, South Korea. Interest is very high here in Thailand as there is a very large Korean population. These will be South Korea’s second Olympic Games and its first Winter Games; Seoul hosted the Summer Olympics in 1988. There are now 2,952 participating athletes registered from 92 nations with a total of 102 events in seven sports (15 disciplines).

Amazingly, a unified Korean team consisting of players from both North Korea and South Korea will compete in the women’s ice hockey tournament following talks in Panmunjom on January 17. Of the 35 players on the team, 12 are from North Korea and 23 are from South Korea. Although Russia participated in the 2014 Winter Olympics, following a doping controversy the Russian NOC was barred and the Russian athletes are participating in Pyeonchang as the “Olympic Athletes from Russia”.

The National Olympic Committee of Thailand is scheduled to field a team of four athletes in the 2018 Winter Olympics, the largest delegation it has sent since its Winter Olympic debut in 2002. Thailand qualified one male — Nicola Zanon — and one female — Vanessa Vanakorn — alpine skier. In cross-country skiing, Thailand qualified two athletes, one male and one female. Mark and Karen Chanloung are siblings who are half-Italian and half-Thai. They grew up in Gressoney-La-Trinité, Italy.

South Korea released it’s first stamps for PyeongChang 2018 way back on August 3, 2011. It had been announced as the host city on July 6, 2011, having won its bid in the first round of voting, receiving more votes than both Munich, Germany and Annecy, France combined.

On November 1, 2017. South Korea issued two miniature sheets containing ten 330-won stamps each portraying the PyeongChang 2018 emblem and the official mascot — official mascot, Soohorang (수호랑), a white tiger — as an athlete in the various sports. The Paralympic Games, which will follow, have a different mascot — Bandabi (반다비), an Asiatic black bear.

Several different nations have released, or scheduled, stamps marking the 2018 Winter Olympics. Those that I’ve heard about are pictured below, sourced from a variety of sources (I don’t have any of these in my collection…yet).

If you know of any stamps released for the 2018 Olympic Winter Games, please let me know in the Comments (and include an image, if you can). Also, what is your favorite Winter Olympics sport? My favorites are bob-sledding and the ski jump).

Go U.S.A.! Go Thailand!