Beijing Winter Games arrive in six months with Olympic-sized questions – East Bay Times

A sigh of aid reverberated throughout Tokyo on Sunday signaling the tip to a Summer season Olympics that some thought by no means would occur due to the continuing COVID-19 pandemic.

However the hangover of organizing probably the most difficult Olympics in historical past gained’t subside shortly. In six months, the Worldwide Olympic Committee will transfer its massive high to Beijing for the controversial 2022 Winter Video games that open Feb. 4.

As IOC president Thomas Bach was dubbing Tokyo “the Olympic Video games of hope, solidarity and peace” some observers already are questioning concerning the sanity of the subsequent cease.

“The double debacle of Tokyo and Beijing are elevating severe questions on the entire Olympic challenge,” stated Jules Boykoff, an Olympics historian at Pacific College in Oregon.

The worldwide pandemic that had plagued the Tokyo Video games will observe winter Olympians to Beijing. It’s not the one subject that has gained traction.

As Beijing is poised to turn into the primary metropolis to play host to a Summer season and Winter Olympics, it faces mounting requires boycotts over human rights abuses, questions on the way it will deal with the coronavirus and the aesthetics of holding competitors on synthetic snowfields.

Politics will rise to the forefront simply because it did 14 years in the past when Beijing performed host to the Summer season Video games.

The Chinese language authorities has confronted worldwide criticism over its therapy of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang province. The management additionally has been underneath scrutiny over a crackdown of protesters in Hong Kong and its insurance policies relating to Tibet and Taiwan.

Human rights teams have alleged that greater than 1 million Uyghurs have been positioned in internment camps. Beijing stated the camps are coaching facilities designed to cease Islamic extremism.

Beijing gained the Winter Video games in 2015 when its solely competitors was  Almaty, Kazakhstan. It turned an either-or alternative after Oslo, Norway, withdrew due to escalating prices to carry the competitors.

Whereas a full-scale boycott is unlikely, activists and Western lawmakers have known as for a diplomatic snub by refusing to ship official authorities representatives to the Beijing Video games.

Past the political enviornment, different questions loom. One of many largest is whether or not spectators shall be allowed on the venues, some which might be 120 miles from Beijing. Final week, Chinese language leaders briefly closed airports amongst different journey restrictions to sluggish the unfold of the COVID Delta variant.

Then there’s the climate, which hit 78 levels final February in a mid-winter warmth spell. At the least the factitious snow on the slopes gained’t soften.

Regardless of the issues, the Winter Video games promise to showcase the largest names on snow and ice: determine skater Nathen Chen, skier Mikaela Shiffrin and snowboarder Shaun White — in the event that they qualify.

The Beijing Video games are scheduled to carry a complete of 109 occasions within the sports activities of biathlon, bobsled, curling, ice hockey, luge, skating and snowboarding. The IOC plans to introduce seven new occasions, together with males’s and girls’s big-air freestyle, ladies’s single-person bobsled and blended group competitions.

Right here’s a have a look at a number of the marquee athletes to look at:

Alpine snowboarding

Shiffrin, 26, has the possibility to turn into probably the most adorned U.S. skier in historical past. She is a two-time gold medal winner, three-time total World Cup champion and a four-time world champion in slalom.

Frenchmen Mathieu Faivre and Alexis Pinturault are among the many greatest within the males’s competitors with Austrians Vincent Kriechmayr and Matthias Mayer and five-time medalist Kjetil Jansrud of Norway within the combine.

Lake Tahoe’s Bryce Bennett and Travis Ganong might problem them within the pace occasions.

Freestyle snowboarding

Stanford-bound teenager Eileen Gu is a budding X-Video games star in slopestyle snowboarding whereas representing China to assist develop the game in her mom’s homeland. The San Franciscan discovered to ski in Tahoe.

Canadian Mikael Kingsbury is seeking to defend his mogul snowboarding title from Pyeongchang. He additionally gained a silver medal in Sochi in 2014. Kingsbury has gained probably the most freestyle snowboarding world medals of any man in historical past.

Determine skating

Nathan Chen struggled in his Olympic debut in 2018 to position fifth. Since then the Yale scholar has been unstoppable as a three-time reigning world champion. Two-time reigning Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan is his closest competitors.

Vincent Zhou of Palo Alto has been Chen’s runner-up at U.S. championships two of the previous three years.

Russians Anna Shcherbakova and teenage Kamila Valieva are favored within the ladies’s competitors. Bradie Tennell is the USA’ most constant skater however Richmond’s Alysa Liu, 16, makes her senior-level debut with a great deal of promise. Karen Chen of Fremont additionally might make her second Olympic group.