Winter Olympics 2022

Martial Media, Culture and Other Arts Off Topic
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Emboldened

Emboldened China opens Olympics, with lockdown and boycotts
By SARAH DiLORENZO, Associated Press 8 hrs ago

BEIJING (AP) — China, which used its first Olympics to amplify its international aspirations, invited the world back Friday — sort of — for the pandemic era’s second Games, this time as an emboldened and more powerful nation whose government’s authoritarian turn provoked some countries’ leaders into staying home.

China’s athletes Dinigeer Yilamujian and Zhao Jiawen prepare to light the Olympic Cauldron during the opening ceremony of the 2022 Winter Olympics, Friday, Feb. 4, 2022, in Beijing. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

© Provided by Associated Press Dancers perform during the opening ceremony of the 2022 Winter Olympics, Friday, Feb. 4, 2022, in Beijing. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)
Chinese President Xi Jinping declared the Games open during a ceremony heavy on ice-blue tones and winter imagery, held in the same lattice-encased Bird’s Nest stadium that hosted the inaugural event of the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Athletes Zhao Jiawen and Dinigeer Yilamujiang, a member of the country’s Uyghur Muslim minority, delivered the final Olympic flame. The choice of Yilamujiang was steeped in symbolism: Critics say the Beijing government has abused and oppressed Uyghurs on a massive scale.

With the flame lit, Beijing became the first city to host both winter and summer Games. And while some are staying away from the second pandemic Olympics in six months, many other world leaders attended the opening ceremony. Most notable: Russian President Vladimir Putin, who met privately with Xi earlier in the day as a dangerous standoff unfolded at Russia’s border with Ukraine.


© Provided by Associated Press Fireworks explode over the National Stadium during the opening ceremony of the 2022 Winter Olympics, Friday, Feb. 4, 2022, in Beijing. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach addressed assembled athletes: “Dear fellow Olympians: Your Olympic stage is set.”

The pandemic also weighs heavily on this year’s Games, just as it did last summer in Tokyo. More than two years after the first COVID-19 cases were identified in China’s Hubei province, some 700 miles (1,100 km) south of Beijing, nearly 6 million human beings have died and hundreds of millions more around the world have been sickened.


© Provided by Associated Press Chinese President Xi Jinping waves during the opening ceremony of the 2022 Winter Olympics, Friday, Feb. 4, 2022, in Beijing. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
The host country itself claims some of the lowest rates of death and illness from the virus, in part because of strict lockdowns imposed by the government aimed at quickly stamping out outbreaks. Such measures instantly greeted anyone arriving to compete in or attend the Winter Games.


© Provided by Associated Press Performers dance as part of the pre-show during the opening ceremony of the 2022 Winter Olympics, Friday, Feb. 4, 2022, in Beijing. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)
An Olympic opening ceremony typically provides the host nation a chance to showcase its culture, define its place in the world, flaunt its best side. That’s something China in particular has been consumed with for decades. But at this year’s Beijing Games, the gulf between performance and reality is shaping up to be particularly jarring.

Fourteen years ago, a Beijing opening ceremony that featured massive pyrotechnic displays and thousands of card-flipping performers set a new standard of extravagance to start an Olympics that no host since has matched. It was a fitting start to an event often billed as China’s “coming out.”

Now, no matter how you view it, China has arrived — but the hope for a more open country that accompanied those first Games has faded.

For Beijing, these Olympics are a confirmation of its status as world player and power. Yet for many outside China, particularly in the West, they have become a confirmation of the country’s embrace of more oppressive policies.

Chinese authorities are crushing pro-democracy activism and tightening their control over Hong Kong, becoming more confrontational with Taiwan, and interning Uyghurs in the far west — a crackdown the U.S. government and others have called genocide.

In protest of those actions, leaders of the United States, Britain, Australia and Canada, among others, imposed a diplomatic boycott on these Games, shunning appearances alongside Chinese leadership while still allowing their athletes to compete. But China came back with its own symbolic finger in the eye Friday, putting Yilamujiang in the opening night’s most anticipated role.

In the runup to the Olympics, China’s suppression of dissent was also on display in the controversy surrounding Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai. She disappeared from public view last year after accusing a former Communist Party official of sexual assault. Her accusation was quickly scrubbed from the internet, and discussion of it remains heavily censored.

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© Provided by Associated Press The Olympic Stadium is lit prior to the opening ceremony of the 2022 Winter Olympics, Friday, Feb. 4, 2022, in Beijing. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
In the shadow of those political issues, China put on its show. As Xi took his seat, the performers turned toward him and repeatedly bowed. A simultaneous cheer went up as they raised their pom poms toward their president — China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, who established the People’s Republic in 1949. A barrage of fireworks, including some that spelled out “Spring,” announced that the festivities were at hand.


© Provided by Associated Press Apostolos Angelis and Maria Ntanou, of Greece, lead their team in during the opening ceremony of the 2022 Winter Olympics, Friday, Feb. 4, 2022, in Beijing.(AP Photo/Ashley Landis)
A line of people dressed in costumes representing China’s varied ethnicities passed the national flag to the pole where it was raised — a show of unity the country often puts on as part of its narrative that its wide range of ethnic groups live together in peace and prosperity.

But politics still elbowed its way into the proceedings. The parade of athletes from Taiwan — the island democracy that China says belongs to it but that competes separately as “Chinese Taipei” — was greeted with a cheer from the crowd, as were the Russian competitors. An overcoated Putin stood and waved at the delegation, nodding crisply as they marched.


© Provided by Associated Press Athletes from Finland arrive during the opening ceremony of the 2022 Winter Olympics, Friday, Feb. 4, 2022, in Beijing. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)
The stadium was relatively full, though by no means at capacity, after authorities decided to allow a select group to attend events.

As with any Olympics, attention will shift Saturday — at least partially — from the geopolitical issues of the day to the athletes themselves.

All eyes turn now to whether Alpine skiing superstar Mikaela Shiffrin, who already owns three Olympic medals, can exceed sky-high expectations. How snowboard sensation Shaun White will cap off his Olympic career — and if the sport’s current standard-bearer, Chloe Kim, will wow us again. And whether Russia’s women will sweep the medals in figure skating.

And China is pinning its hopes on Eileen Gu, the 18-year-old, American-born freestyle skier who has chosen to compete for her mother’s native country and could win three gold medals.

As they compete, the conditions imposed by Chinese authorities offer a stark contrast to the party atmosphere of the 2008 Games. Some flight attendants, immigration officials and hotel staff have been covered head to toe in hazmat gear, masks and goggles. There is a daily testing regimen for all attendees, followed by lengthy quarantines for all those testing positive. And there is no passing from the Olympic venues through the ever-present cordons of chain-link fence — covered in cheery messages of a “shared future together” — into the city itself.

China itself has also transformed in the years since its first Games. Then, it was an emerging global economic force making its biggest leap yet onto the global stage. Now it is a burgeoning superpower. Xi, who was the head of the 2008 Olympics, now runs the entire country and has encouraged a personality-driven campaign of adulation.

Three decades after its troops crushed massive democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, killing hundreds and perhaps thousands of Chinese, the government locked up an estimated 1 million members of minority groups, mostly Uyghurs, in mass internment camps. The situation has led human rights groups to dub these the “Genocide Games.”

China says the camps are “vocational training and education centers” that are part of an anti-terror campaign and have closed. It denies any human rights violations.

Outside the Olympic “bubble” that separates regular Beijingers from Olympians and their entourages, thousands of people, bundled in winter jackets, gathered west of the stadium hoping for a distant glimpse of the fireworks, but they were pushed back by police.

Elsewhere in the city, others expressed enthusiasm and pride at the world coming to their doorstep. Zhang Wenquan, a collector of Olympic memorabilia, said Friday that he was excited, but that was tempered by the virus that has changed so much for so many.

“I think the effect of the fireworks is going to be much better than it in 2008,” Zhang said. “I actually wanted to go to the venue to watch it. … But because of the epidemic, there may be no chance.”

Despite the global chaos and controversy, I hope the Games are a success.

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Closing

Beijing’s Olympics Close, Ending Safe But Odd Global Moment
The terrarium of a Winter Games that has been Beijing 2022 came to its end Sunday, capping an unprecedented Asian Olympic trifecta and sending the planet’s most global sporting event off to the West for the foreseeable future.
BY ASSOCIATED PRESS

FEBRUARY 20, 2022 8:25AM

The Olympic Cauldron and rings are seen as performers dance during the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics Closing Ceremony on Day 16 of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics at Beijing National Stadium on Feb. 20. MAJA HITIJ/GETTY IMAGES)

A pile of figure-skating rubble created by Russian misbehavior. A new Chinese champion — from California. An ace American skier who faltered and went home empty-handed. The end of the Olympic line for the world’s most renowned snowboarder. All inside an anti-COVID “closed loop” enforced by China’s authoritarian government.

The terrarium of a Winter Games that has been Beijing 2022 came to its end Sunday, capping an unprecedented Asian Olympic trifecta and sending the planet’s most global sporting event off to the West for the foreseeable future, with no chance of returning to this corner of the world until at least 2030.

It was weird. It was messy and, at the same time, somehow sterile. It was controlled and calibrated in ways only Xi Jinping’s China could pull off. And it was sequestered in a “bubble” that kept participants and the city around them — and, by extension, the sporadically watching world — at arm’s length.

On Sunday night, Xi and International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach stood together as Beijing handed off to Milan-Cortina, site of the 2026 Winter Games. “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” kicked off a notably Western-flavored show with Chinese characteristics as dancers with tiny, fiery snowflakes glided across the stadium in a ceremony that, like the opening, was headed by Chinese director Zhang Yimou.

Unlike the first pandemic Olympics in Tokyo last summer, which featured all but empty seats at the opening and closing, a modest but energetic crowd populated the seats of Beijing’s “Bird’s Nest” stadium. It felt somewhat incongruous — a show bursting with color and energy and enthusiasm and even joy, the very things that couldn’t assert themselves inside China’s COVID bubble.

“We welcome China as a winter sport country,” Bach said, closing the Games. He called their organization “extraordinary” and credited the Chinese and their organizing committee for serving them up “in such an excellent way and a safe way.”

By many mechanical measures, these Games were a success. They were, in fact, quite safe — albeit in the carefully modulated, dress-up-for-company way that authoritarian governments always do best. The local volunteers, as is usually the case, were delightful, helpful and engaging, and they received high-profile accolades at the closing.

There was snow — most of it fake, some of it real. The venues — many of them, like the Bird’s Nest and the Aquatic Center, harvested from the 2008 edition of the Beijing Olympics — performed to expectations. One new locale, Big Air Shougang, carved from a repurposed steel mill, was an appealingly edgy mashup of winter wonderland and rust-belt industrial landscape.

TV ratings were down, but streaming viewership was up: By Saturday, NBC had streamed 3.5 billion minutes from Beijing, compared to 2.2 billion in South Korea in 2018.

There were no major unexpected logistical problems, only the ones created deliberately to stem the spread of COVID in the country where the coronavirus first emerged more than two years ago.

And stemmed it seemed to be. As of Saturday, the segregated system that effectively turned Beijing into two cities — one sequestered, one proceeding very much as normal — had produced only 463 positive tests among thousands of visitors entering the bubble since Jan. 23. Not surprisingly, the state-controlled media loved this.

“The success in insulating the event from the virus and keeping disruption to sports events to a minimum also reflected the effectiveness and flexibility of China’s overall zero-COVID policies,” the pro-government Global Times newspaper said, citing epidemiologists who say “the COVID-19 prevention experience accumulated from this Olympics can also inspire Chinese cities to adjust their policies.”

Look deeper, though, and a different story emerges about these Games.

Internationally, many critiqued them as the “authoritarian Olympics” and denounced the IOC for holding them in concert with a government accused of gross human rights violations against ethnic Uyghurs and Tibetans in its far west and harsh policies against Hong Kong democracy activists off its southeastern coast. Several Western governments boycotted by not sending any official delegations, though they sent athletes.

For its part, China denied such allegations, as it typically does, and featured a Uyghur as part of its slate of Olympic torch-carriers for the opening ceremony Feb. 4.

And then, of course, there were the Russians. And doping. Again.

The 15-year-old Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva tested positive for using a banned heart medication. The result wasn’t announced by anti-doping officials until after she’d won gold as part of the team competition, even though the sample was taken weeks earlier.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport cleared her to compete in the individual discipline, ruling that as a minor she had protected status. But Valieva, although heavily favored to win, fell several times during her free skate routine, landing her fourth place and prompting a cold reception from her embattled coach, Eteri Tutberidze.

“Rather than giving her comfort, rather than to try to help her, you could feel this chilling atmosphere, this distance,” Bach said the next day, proclaiming his outrage.

Valieva’s Russian teammates took gold and silver, but on a night of drama, even the winners were in tears. The affair produced one possible legacy for Beijing: Valieva’s ordeal has inspired talk of raising the minimum age for Olympic skaters from 15 to 17 or 18.

American skier Mikaela Shiffrin also came to Beijing with high expectations, only to see them dashed when she failed to finish three races. She left without any medal at all. In an image to remember, the TV cameras captured Shiffrin sitting dejectedly on the snow, head in hands, for several minutes.

The 2022 Games were controversial from the moment the IOC awarded them to Beijing, the frequently snowless capital of a country without much of a winter sports tradition. Almaty, Kazakhstan, was the only other city in play after four other bids were withdrawn due to lack of local support or high cost.

Geopolitical tensions also shadowed these Games, with Russia’s buildup of troops along its border with Ukraine spurring fears of war in Europe even as the “Olympic Truce” supposedly kicked in. In the closing, Bach said athletes “embraced each other even if your countries are divided by conflict,” an apparent reference to a hug captured on camera between a Russian athlete and a Ukrainian one.

China swelled with pride, and its social media swelled with comments, as Eileen Gu, an America-born freestyle skier who chose to compete for China, her mother’s native country, became an international superstar. Her three medals — two gold, one silver — set a new record for her sport, and adulation for Gu literally broke the Chinese internet at one point, briefly crashing the servers of Sina Weibo, the massive Twitter-like network.

And Chinese snowboarder Su Yiming, a former child actor, won over the home crowd with a dominant gold medal big air performance.

Other moments to remember from Beijing 2022:

— With a nearly perfect free skate and a record-setting short program, the 22-year-old figure skater Nathan Chen became the first American gold medalist in his sport since 2010.
— Snowboarding’s best known rider, Shaun White, called it a career after finishing fourth in the halfpipe in his fifth Olympics, passing the torch to athletes like Su and the halfpipe gold medalist, Japan’s Ayumu Hirano.
— American boarder and social media figure Chloe Kim won the gold in halfpipe for the second time, adding to her 2018 medal from Pyeongchang.
— Norway, a country whose total population of 5 million is less than one half of one percent of the host country’s, led the medal count, as it often does. Russia was second, followed by Germany, Canada and the United States.

These third straight Games in Asia, after Pyeongchang in 2018 and the delayed Tokyo Summer Games six months ago, were also the second pandemic Games. And the 16,000 athletes and other international visitors who spent the entire time segregated from the host city behind tall chain-link fences couldn’t help but see the countless signs trumpeting unremitting iterations of the Olympic slogan: “Together for a Shared Future.”

But for much of these austere and distant Games, wintry not only in their weather but in their tenor itself, a post-pandemic shared future — the hug-and-harmony variety that the Olympics builds its entire multinational brand around — seemed all but out of reach.

See you in Milano Cortina in 2026