Who to Watch at the Winter Olympics

Editor’s Note: Find all of The Atlantic’s Winter Olympics 2018 coverage here.

On Friday, the 2018 Winter Olympics opening ceremony will get underway in Pyeongchang, South Korea. For every athlete involved, the arrival of the Games marks the realization of a lifelong dream, the payoff for countless hours of training and sacrifice. For the nations represented, the Games are a show of goodwill and global citizenship, however fraught, in the case of the host country and its neighbor to the north.

For viewers at home, though, the Olympics can be something much simpler: a perfectly pleasing television event to liven up the middle of winter. The Games have every ingredient of a two-week miniseries, promising triumph and failure, raw emotion and sideshow laughs, pure spectacle, and constantly rising stakes. Most importantly, they come fully stocked with characters. But while no Olympian is undeserving of an audience, even the most committed viewer has to prioritize. Below, then, is a brief guide to the 2018 Games’ most compelling figures.

Lindsey Vonn, Alpine Skiing

This year marks Vonn’s Olympic return, as she missed the 2014 Games