PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — Lari Lehtonen, an Olympic cross-country skier from Finland, pulled his two sons out of kindergarten a month ago. They were not allowed to attend birthday parties. They were prohibited from crowded indoor spaces. They could have play dates but only after a call to the friend’s parents.
This may sound like a peculiar style of helicopter parenting, but Lehtonen was not worried about his children — he was worried about himself. Specifically, he was worried about catching a cold, and he knew that the more time the lads spent around other children, the more likely they were to become little vectors of disease who could wreck his Olympics.