The Winter Olympic Virus: Day Zero (Non-Ceremony Edition)

• Not sure whether there will be an Opening Ceremony post itself.  Might depend on if I'm up when it happens in 12 hours.  The Ceremony (and the Closing as well) will be held at the same "Bird's Nest" in Beijing which held the Summer Games Ceremonies 14 years ago.
• Article today about Winter Olympic contingents of one athlete.  They include an alpine skier from the sole first-time Winter Olympic nation this time around, Haiti.
• Other countries with only one Winter Olympian:  Albania, American Samoa, Cyprus, Ecuador, Eritrea, Ghana, India, Kyrgyzstan, Malta, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, The Phillippines, Saudi Arabia, Timor-Leste, Uzbekistan, and the Virgin Islands.  Of which, only the Maltan, the Virgin Islands representative, and the Nigerian are not alpine skiers.
• This will bring the total number of nations to the Games this year to 91.  Eight competed four years and won't this year.  Six did not attend the Pyeongchang Games and will here.
• Only 36 nations will bring a contingent of 10 or more athletes, according to a preliminary list published in Wikipedia.
• The Sports Illustrated projections have 26 nations winning medals.  Gracenote has it's projected total at 30.  30 nations medaled in Pyeongchang.  26 in Sochi.
• If the Sports Illustrated list is a super-set of the nations who medal in Beijing, there are no nations on that list who would make their Winter Olympic debut on the table.
• In tonight's Opening Ceremony, it will be, as it was in 2008, in rough order of the number of strokes in the first Chinese character in the name of the nation and then the order of the strokes in that character.  After that, the process of pseudo-alphabetization will continue until all nations have their spot...
• With three exceptions this year, instead of the traditional two.  Greece marches first, China last -- per the tradition.
• The third change is a nod to the 2026 hosts Italy, who will march second-to-last, just ahead of the 2022 hosts.
• NBCFail Watch:  Do not expect much from nations after about halfway -- the United States marches in at about three-fifths of the way through the Ceremony. (56th of the 91)
• Others of note:  Denmark is the first Winter Olympics powerhouse to march in at 13th.  Canada is 27th.  Great Britain 44th.  The illegal Russian team is 46th.  France just after them at 47.  Projected table-topper Norway is 52nd.  Austria, Switzerland, and Sweden are 76th through 78th.  Germany is 85th.
• In the only other real news from the first day of the pre-Opening IOC Session, Seiko Hashimoto, the 2021 Tokyo president, was named the Women in Sport award winner by the IOC.
• In declaring the Session open, Chinese dictator Xi said the world was entering a new phase of "turbulence and transformation".