Garlic Girls Take Over the Olympics, and Their Hometown Is Loving It.
UISEONG, South Korea — They arrived from all corners of Uiseong County. They brought homemade signs, waved flags and screamed for every shot. They came to celebrate four young women from this farming community who have emerged as the most unexpected (and most gloriously bespectacled) stars of the 2018 Winter Olympics.
On Tuesday afternoon, townspeople gathered inside the gymnasium here at Uiseong Girls High School to root for the South Korean women’s curling team, whose match against the United States was shown on a big screen as an M.C. leaned into a microphone and banged on a drum.
“I skip dinner whenever they’re playing,” said Chung Poong-ja, 75, who danced on the gym floor once the South Koreans sealed their victory against the Americans. “My focus needs to be on the match.”
Kim Sung-hee, 67, said, “I lost my voice from cheering so hard.”
It was the biggest, loudest party in the province, and for good reason: The team’s top four players grew up in this small city of about 54,000 people and graduated from this high school. Now, thanks to an improbable run at the Olympics being held in Pyeongchang, about 80 miles to the north, the team — dubbed the Garlic Girls by the Korean press, owing to the region’s production of garlic — seems on the cusp of international celebrity.
Never mind that the Garlic Girls, with their dominant record in pool play, have vaulted themselves into medal position in a sport that is still foreign to most South Koreans. . .
“It’s definitely the power of the garlic,” she said. “It’s the healthiest food in the world.”
The region is known for its garlic. Cartoon garlic bulbs smile from billboards. Garlic statues dot the countryside. Kim Joo-soo, the mayor, deemed it the finest garlic in the world.
We think so,” he said.
It is all because of a volcano that erupted 70 million years ago, he said, and left ash that enriched the soil.
Now, all these millenniums later, the city has sprouted something new.'>>>
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/20/sports/olympics/garlic-girls-korean-curling.html?
