Athletes, organisers locked in Pyeongchang cold war

A woman takes a picture of her friend in a cut out of a snow wall near the Olympic stadium of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea February 7, 2018. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard

PYEONGCHANG (Reuters) - Even for cold weather warriors hardened by years of winter sports training, the icy chill of South Korea's frigid February has come as a shock to the system in the leadup to this month's Pyeongchang Olympics.

Plunging to minus 20 degrees Celsius (-4 Fahrenheit) at night and rarely breaking above freezing in the day, the temperatures have put Pyeongchang on track to be the coldest Olympics in decades and present athletes with a very different set of conditions from the sunshine and slushy snow of Sochi four years ago.