On to Beijing Winter Games in six months after Tokyo Olympics end

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

However the hangover of organizing essentially the most difficult Olympics in historical past gained’t subside shortly. In six months, the Worldwide Olympic Committee will transfer its huge prime 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 following cease.

“The double debacle of Tokyo and Beijing are elevating critical 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 develop into the primary metropolis to play host to a Summer time 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 time Video games.

The Chinese language authorities has confronted worldwide criticism over its remedy of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang province. The management additionally has been beneath 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 referred to as for a diplomatic snub by refusing to ship official authorities representatives to the Beijing Video games.

Past the political area, different questions loom. One of many greatest is whether or not spectators will likely be allowed on the venues, some which can be 120 miles from Beijing. Final week, Chinese language leaders quickly closed airports amongst different journey restrictions to sluggish the unfold of the COVID Delta variant.

Then there may be the climate, which hit 78 levels final February in a mid-winter warmth spell. No less than the factitious snow on the slopes gained’t soften.

Regardless of the issues, the Winter Video games promise to showcase the most important 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 combined workforce competitions.

Right here’s a take a look at among the marquee athletes to observe:

Alpine snowboarding

Shiffrin, 26, has the possibility to develop into essentially 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 may problem them within the velocity 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 trying to defend his mogul snowboarding title from Pyeongchang. He additionally gained a silver medal in Sochi in 2014. Kingsbury has gained essentially the most freestyle snowboarding world medals of any man in historical past.

Determine skating

Nathan Chen struggled in his Olympic debut in 2018 to put fifth. Since then the Yale pupil 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 america’ 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 may make her second Olympic workforce.