Thread: Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games

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Technologies used in transforming "Water Cube" into "Ice Cube"

Barriers both physical and metaphorical mean the Olympic ideal faces a huge challenge at Beijing 2022

By

Oliver Brown,
CHIEF SPORTS WRITER, IN ZHANGJIAKOU, CHINA
4 February 2022 • 8:36am

Brutal hosts, space age ski jumps and bizarre venues – these Winter Olympics need the sport to succeed


Big Air Shougang with its backdrop of industrial cooling towers (top left) hosts freestyle skiing and snowboarding; the national ski jumping centre (top right) is in Zhangjiakou; the alpine skiing centre (bottom right) is in the Yanqing district and the speed skating oval (bottom left) is in Beijing CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES / REUTERS


Here in the mountains of Hebei province, 125 miles north-west of downtown Beijing, certain sights are reassuring in their redolence of the Winter Olympics. There are disco-lit ski slopes, dustings of actual snow on the arid peaks, even strings of illuminations along a portion of the Great Wall of China. It is only when you reach the heart of the Zhangjiakou “cluster”, a heavily fortified, bio-secure community created by the hosts with the sole aim of a zero-Covid Games, that the spectacle becomes very strange, very quickly.


Behind the shiny facades of just-finished hotels, the Olympic experience is quite dizzyingly bizarre. Anyone accredited for these Games is subject not just to daily PCR tests and “no talking” signs but to a fanatically enforced physical separation from the Chinese community. The four-hour journey from Beijing Airport, along vertiginous roads, is made under police escort, as regular motorists are warned not to assist Olympic vehicles even in the event of car accidents. Once in Zhangjiakou itself, the envelope is sealed shut, with not a single interaction permitted with a local citizen beyond the bubble. Welcome to what the International Olympic Committee is calling, with a frankly perverse degree of pride, the “closed loop”.

Nothing like this has been attempted in global sport. The extremes make last summer’s Tokyo equivalent look decadent. There are grave doubts as to whether such an experiment is ethical or even humane. It was especially galling to hear IOC president Thomas Bach declaring, in his boundless hubris: “This is the mission: always building bridges, never erecting walls.” Somehow, he kept a straight face, despite having sanctioned an event in which every venue is surrounded by fences and patrolled by security guards preventing the slightest engagement with the public.


In a sense, the IOC and the Chinese government deserve each other: two Kafkaesque bureaucracies dedicated to their own glorification and oblivious to outside censure. But it is worth asking exactly how, two years into a pandemic, we arrived at the absurd scenario of holding the Games in the one country still pursuing the total elimination of Covid-19, even at the expense of global isolation. In 2015, Norway, weary of such ludicrous IOC demands as a meeting with the king and a ceremonial greeting for Bach on the runway, pulled Oslo out of the running for 2022. Just two candidates remained: China and Kazakhstan, both countries with dismal human rights records.

The suits in Lausanne, never shy of a spot of tyranny tourism, opted for Beijing over Almaty by the slender margin of 44 votes to 40. It was not so much a convincing show of faith as an acquiescence in the least worst option. Seven years on, and in defiance of a worldwide plague originating in China, here are the fruits of that dubious pact: an antiseptic simulation of Olympic reality, with giant plumes of disinfectant and venues populated only with rent-a-crowds. Through it all, the delightful volunteers, all of whom will have to do 21 days’ quarantine once this is over, still smile. It is like The Truman Show in hazmat suits.


In Zhangjiakou, meanwhile, even the bartenders are dressed in hazmat suits CREDIT: REUTERS

Can great sport be enacted against such a suffocating backdrop? The athletes are nothing if not resourceful in their quest. Elana Meyers Taylor, a three-time medallist in bobsleigh who travelled from the US with her two-year-old son, is separated from her support network after a positive test, reduced to training for the most explosive discipline on ice by pacing up and down her room. For some, the emotional strain is unbearable. Kim Meylemans, the Belgian skeleton racer, had to beg the IOC for a place in the athletes’ village, her request granted only after she posted an anguished message on social media about her strict confinement.


And yet for all these privations, all the fetid politics, sport will bring some precious light for the next 17 days. Acts of supreme fearlessness and elegance will be performed – many, believe or not, by British medallists-in-waiting. It has been a lean 12 years for the country, with all three Winter Olympic golds since 2010 won in skeleton, a sport so niche that anyone seeking to emulate Amy Williams or Lizzy Yarnold must move to continental Europe to find a practice track. This time, bets are spread far more evenly, from Charlotte Bankes in snowboard cross to Dave Ryding in slalom to the vibrant figure skating pair of Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson, seeking to conjure the perfect ice dance for Valentine’s Day.


It is easy to be fatalistic about homegrown prospects in Chinese mountain conditions, forecast to be as frigid as minus -23C or lower. British alpine traditions remain threadbare: Ryding, who needed to perfect his craft on a dry slope in Pendle, is pitting himself against Austrians who have had skis strapped to their feet ever since they could stand. But we should remember how, irrespective of the feeble recent medal hauls, the Winter Olympics is embedded remarkably deep in the British psyche. Moments such as Torvill and Dean’s Bolero in Sarajevo or Eddie the Eagle’s kamikaze ski jumps in Calgary have lost none of their imprint on popular consciousness. With a fair wind blowing, the crop of 2022 could yet deliver a fitting encore.


There are, naturally, far graver matters at stake here than the question of whether Andrew Musgrave can sneak a bronze in cross-country skiing. A deserved scrutiny is about to focused on the full horrors of Chinese autocracy, with Bach confirming that he plans to hold a meeting inside the loop with Peng Shuai, the tennis player whose whereabouts have still not been confirmed since she accused the country’s former deputy premier of sexual assault. An unavoidable embarrassment is about to be inflicted, too, through the diplomatic boycotts by several western countries, including the UK and the US, in response to reports of China’s atrocities against the Uighur community. It is as toxic a political cocktail as could be imagined.

Sport, quite simply, has never felt more needed as a palate-cleanser.

Just watching a bit of the Games now ... there is almost NO SPECTATORS.

If there was no Media there ... it would be the Ghost Games.

These games will go down as the strangest Olympics in history.

Virtually all of the Beijimanng snow is fake -- a resource-intensive, 'dangerous' trend as climate warms - CNN

All the Beijing snow is human-made -- a resource-intensive, 'dangerous' trend as planet warms

Originally Posted by David48atTD

Just watching a bit of the Games now ... there is almost NO SPECTATORS.

If there was no Media there ... it would be the Ghost Games.

Maybe not many competitors too, apparently their flu is running a bit wild.

If there was no media would the games exist, like that quote about a tree falling in the forest and no one to hear it.

The downhill snowboarding is pretty... Rad.

Originally Posted by David48atTD

.. there is almost NO SPECTATORS.

Do you have a working link to your full Beijing 2022 Opening Ceremony?

Originally Posted by malmomike77

If there was no media would the games exist,

if there was no foreign competitors would china win all the medals

like always this spectacle is for domestic consumption

Thanks for your link.

Originally Posted by David48atTD

More images and credit here

One possible reason for no spectators at the event:

"COVID-19 restrictions kept most of the 17,345 seats empty"

but:

"China’s first gold of the games brought cheers from a crowd gathered in front of a big screen outdoor TV in Beijing’s Wangfujing shopping district.

“It was thrilling. I was very excited and was filled with all kinds of emotions as I watched the Chinese team approach the finish step by step,” said Cheng Hongwei, who had stopped to watch while strolling down the main pedestrian street.

“It’s a very exciting thing to see the Chinese national flag being raised again, and I’m very proud as a Chinese,” said another Beijing resident Jolin Li, who said her 7-year-old daughter is a huge fan of the Winter Games.

The frantic mixed relay features four skaters per team covering 18 laps. Each skater races twice in the following order: woman, woman, man, man, woman, woman, man, man."

Only two genders it seems.

and

"The final got off to a rocky beginning, with Hungary and Canada crashing in the first turn, forcing the race to be called back to the start.

China needed some help even getting to the A final.

It took penalties to the Americans and Russians to elevate the Chinese to the final, along with Hungary, which won in the semifinals.

The U.S. was called for blocking by an infield skater after the Americans had finished second. The Russians were penalized for an extra skater on the team causing an obstruction."


It appears the competitors all wanted to win a coveted Olympic medal after all, TV cameras or not.

The answer is very simple: Most people think chinkystan is a totalitarian shithole. Including the competitors.

^

Now that was a useful post regarding the 2022 Winter Olympics.

Do you have a link to your source of the allegation?

Or is it an opinion from yourself, once again?

Originally Posted by OhOh

The world would love to watch.

I know you are divorced from reality but the majority of the world is more interested in getting their next meal and not worrying about rich people parties

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

The answer is very simple: Most people think chinkystan is a totalitarian shithole. Including the competitors.

More complaints from athletes: ‘I have no more tears’: Beijing’s Winter Olympics hit by athlete complaints | Winter Olympics Beijing 2022 | The Guardian

It sounds like the Chinese are making a right fucking mess of it.

Originally Posted by hallelujah

It sounds like the Chinese are making a right fucking mess of it.

The IOC should never have given an event that celebrates global cultures, freedom of expression and fair competition to a shithole like chinkystan in the first place.

Originally Posted by OhOh

One possible reason for no spectators at the event:

"COVID-19 restrictions kept most of the 17,345 seats empty"

Difficult to find any reporting on the crowd numbers (possibly because there are no spectators ) however ...

Tickets for the 2022 Winter Olympics are being distributed to “targeted” groups of people as organizers attempt to contain the spread of COVID-19 while still seeking for venues to be at least 30% capacity.
Cristophe Dubi, the International Olympic Committee’s Olympic Games Executive Director, told Reuters earlier this week that capacity would be “fine-tuned at a venue-by-venue basis” but that a “good result” would be to have a third of the seats filled.

2022 Winter Olympics Organizers Hope for 30 Percent Capacity – NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth

hashtag #ZhuYiFellOver

---

China Forced To Censor Social Media After Athlete Is Abused For Falling Over


Credit

Chinese censors step in after local fans attack American-born skater Zhu Yi’s Winter Olympics ‘disgrace’

Making her Winter Olympics debut for Team China in the women’s short program team event, American-born figure skater Zhu Yi was eager to prove herself to the Chinese public.
Instead, the 19-year-old is facing a firestorm on Chinese social media after she fell flat on the ice just 20 seconds into her routine on Sunday.


On Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform, the hashtag ‘Zhu Yi has fallen’ gained 200 million views in just a few hours.

Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics: China’s American-born skater Zhu Yi falls flat on debut as censors stop local fans’ attacks | 7NEWS

Well, Australia won a Gold. Fancy that.

how many disqualifications are needed for a chinese olympics

Originally Posted by malmomike77

Maybe not many competitors too, apparently their flu is running a bit wild.

If there was no media would the games exist, like that quote about a tree falling in the forest and no one to hear it.

You mean their "flu." The Chinese competitors seems to be getting the "flu" while foreign competitors...who are supposed to be in a bubble...are getting COVID. They have been there long enough that their COVID couldn't have been brought in by them.

Originally Posted by baldrick

how many disqualifications are needed for a chinese olympics

How many non-Chinese competitors are there?

I wonder how many contenders to China's prospectus medal winners get 'Covid'.