Shirtless Tongan returns, steals Opening Ceremony show with Bermudians in shorts

Travis Mewhirter

It’s cold in PyeongChang right now. As in, potentially minus-13 degrees Fahrenheit cold. Cold enough that a number of news outlets have run stories with headlines wondering if it is actually too cold to run a Winter Olympics.

Cold enough that, during the final rehearsal for Friday night’s Opening Ceremony, volunteers walked out when temperatures plummeted to -9 F, and prior to the real Opening Ceremony, spectators — what few there were — were given a blanket and gloves.

Tonga’s flag-bearer, Pita Taufatofua, doesn’t care. Just as he did in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, Taufatofua came out shirtless and glistening with oil at the Olympic Opening Ceremony.

Now he’s back representing Tonga as a skier. And yes, he’s still shirtless, and still very, very oily.

Pita Taufatofua, Tonga’s flag bearer for the past two Olympic Games, stole the show again at the Opening Ceremony.
Pita Taufatofua, Tonga’s flag bearer for the past two Olympic Games, stole the show again at the Opening Ceremony.

The internet responded, as expected, once again for its favorite flag-bearer.

Bermuda, too, didn’t seem to care about the weather. The Bermudian Olympians didn’t seem to care that the average low temperature in Bermuda in February is a lovely 59 degrees. While every other nation marched in layer upon layer — the United States wore heated jackets — with beanies and boots and gloves and any type of warm weather gear one could imagine, Bermuda rocked shorts.

Shorts? In temps that dipped into the negatives?

Indeed, shorts — and, along with Taufatofua, they immediately stole the show at the Opening Ceremony, becoming the unofficial gold medalists of the evening.

Currently, PyeongChang is on track to become the coldest Games on record, likely to surpass Lillehammer, Norway, site of the 1994 Games, when temperatures hit 12 F.

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More Olympic coverage on Yahoo Sports:
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