No new security for Team USA ahead of Pyenogchang "challenge" says chief

United State Olympic Committee Chief Executive Scott Blackmun and the team's athletes sought to bring the focus of the upcoming Pyeongchang Olympics back to sport, rather than on tensions between between the US and the host country's North Korean neighbours.

At an event in New York on Wednesday, Blackmun said: "The opportunities like this to hang out with these men and women more than offsets all the logistical challenges.

"Sochi had challenges. Rio had challenges. London had challenges. Whether Pyeongchang is more or less [of a challenge] is really not the question for us. It's 'Are we preparing our athletes to the greatest extent possible?'."

Threats and insults exchanged between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korea leader Kim Jong Un in recent months have heightened tensions on the peninsula but the team had received no new guidance on security or travel restrictions from the U.S. State Department, Blackmun said.

Blackmun also said that Pyeongchang-bound U.S. athletes would face no new guidance on what they could do when not competing, despite embarrassing behaviour by swimmer Ryan Lochte and some of his team mates at the 2016 Summer Games in Brazil.

Although Team USA would always prefer athletes remained inside the secure areas of the venues and Olympic Village as much as possible, Blackmun accepted that there would be times when they would "leave the system".

"We just ask that they carry their cell phones and stay in touch and make sure their team knows where they're going to be if they get outside of the system," he said.

Blackmun declined to say whether he expected to top the 28 medals, including nine golds, captured by U.S. athletes in 2014 in Sochi.

"We have athletes that we think can do pretty well ... but we don't talk about medal count," he added.