The Winter Olympics are supposed to be cold, of course. Just maybe not this cold.

In an extraordinary show of unexpected unity, North and South Korea sat side by side yesterday under exploding fireworks that represented peace, not destruction, as the 2018 Winter Olympics opened on a Korean Peninsula riven by generations of anger,

Scratch beneath the political permafrost and the frozen vials of Russian urine, set aside a far-from-thawed Cold War, and a Winter Olympics is threatening to break out in Pyeongchang.

US vice president Mike Pence is using his appearance at the Winter Olympics to call on the international community to get tougher on North Korea's nuclear ambitions and human rights abuses.

Given his surname and upbringing — on a tiny island of fewer than 600 people in Norway — on first glance it seems unlikely that Thomas Westgaard would be competing for Ireland in the 2018 Winter Olympics.

International sport is in need of some Black Box Thinking, writes Jack Anderson

Seamus O’Connor will be Ireland’s flag bearer tomorrow morning as the coldest Winter Olympics in decades gets underway with the opening ceremony in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

The World Anti-Doping Agency has described the decision to overturn the lifetime bans given to 28 Russian athletes as a cause of "dismay and frustration".

Sport Ireland has defended its handling of Steven Colvert’s doping case in the wake of a claim by one of the world’s leading anti-doping experts that the Irish sprinter was wrongfully convicted.

The United States Anti-Doping Agency has launched a strongly-worded attack on the International Olympic Committee after 28 Russian athletes had lifetime doping bans overturned on appeal.

In the escalating battle for our attention, and the chance to caress our credit cards, sports broadcasting has become a hard-fought battleground.

There’s a famously difficult move in freestyle skiing called a ‘cork’, a fact that particularly tickles Brendan Newby.

North and South Korea have agreed in principle to field a joint women’s ice hockey team during next month’s Winter Olympics in South Korea.

The US has agreed to delay joint military exercises with South Korea until after the Winter Olympics, the Pentagon has said.

“JAW-JAW is always better than war-war” — a reflection on the nature of conflict attributed to both Harold McMillan and Winston Churchill.

A word of advice for Irish Olympians competing in South Korea next month: the cold is back for the Winter Games.

Russian athletes who are proven to be clean should be allowed to compete under the Russian flag at the 2018 Winter Olympics, according to Arsenal shareholder Alisher Usmanov.

Individual athletes who can prove they have not cheated could compete under the Olympic flag.

Vitaly Mutko is now Russia's deputy prime minister, president of the Russian Football Union and the chairman of the organising committee for Russia 2018.

Russia has been banned from sending a team to February’s Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.

The lawyer of the man who blew the whistle on Russia's state-sponsored doping programme believes anything other than a ban from February's Winter Olympics would "embolden the cheats".

Former Irish Olympics president Pat Hickey is at the centre of fresh scandal after it emerged he signed secret ticket deals with ‘banned’ agent THG last year.

Chinese telecommunications company ZTE has unveiled the Gigabit Phone, which is being billed as the world's first 5G-enabled smartphone.

Patrick McMillan, 25, is a skier from Ogonnelloe, Co. Clare who races for Ireland in Super-G and downhill disciplines. A bad shoulder injury before Christmas means he is missing out this month’s World Championships but he hopes to be back racing in early March and is focused on racing for Ireland at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.

RTÉ has yet to decide if it will broadcast the 2020 and 2024 Olympics after US-based media giant Discovery Communications secured the European broadcast rights for four Olympics through 2024 in a landmark deal worth €1.3bn.

Irish snowboarder Seamus O’Connor’s Sochi adventure came to a disappointing end yesterday as he narrowly failed to qualify for the final of the halfpipe discipline at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.

It's the feelgood story that has everything - tears of joy, sporting triumph, Gangnam Style, a South Korean GAA team and random cake.

Fourteen athletes from Ireland will set off from Dublin Airport today to take their place at the 2013 Special Olympics World Winter Games.

Roy Keane’s neighbour and namesake has one thing over the famous footballer.

The BBC have been awarded the broadcast rights for the next four summer and winter Olympics up to 2020.

BROADCAST revenues between 2014 and 2016 for the Olympic Games will exceed €2.79billion, International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Jacques Rogge confirmed in Durban yesterday.

The Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi has won the contest to host the 2014 Winter Olympics.

International Olympic Committee Vice President Kim Un-yong was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison on embezzlement and bribery charges in Seoul today in a ruling that will probably end his long, powerful career at the IOC.