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Anybody who tuned into the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer season Olympics in Beijing bore witness to an occasion they wouldn’t quickly neglect.
The four-hour, nine-minute show of particular results, lights and ingenuity set a brand new normal for a gap ceremony and drew raves from worldwide media for being spectacular and spellbinding, a present that no host metropolis has since matched in creativeness and magnitude.
Nearly 14 years later, the Chinese language capital is as soon as once more within the highlight because the host of the 2022 Winter Olympics, which get underway Wednesday, two days earlier than the official opening ceremony on Friday. NBC, Peacock, USA Community, CNBC, NBCOlympics.com and NBC Sports activities app will once more crew as much as present 3,000-plus hours of protection over 17 days of a document 109 medal occasions in 15 sports activities, amongst them determine skating, alpine snowboarding, snowboarding, ice hockey, pace skating, freestyle snowboarding, biathlon and luge.
Worldwide athletes anticipated to vie for {hardware} at these Video games embody Mikael Kingsbury (freestyle snowboarding, Canada), Hanyu Yuzuru (determine skating, Japan), Mikaela Shiffrin (alpine snowboarding, U.S.), Francesco Friedrich (bobsled, Germany), Suzanne Schulting (quick observe pace skating, Netherlands), Charlotte Kalla (cross-country snowboarding, Sweden), Nathan Chen (determine skating, U.S.), Eileen Gu (freestyle snowboarding, China), Sara Takanashi (ski leaping, Japan), Tina Hermann (skeleton, Germany) and Ester Ledecka (snowboarding, alpine snowboarding, Czech Republic).
In fact, the continuing COVID-19 pandemic can even play into the storylines as circumstances proceed to vary. For his or her half, the Worldwide Olympic Committee and Olympic organizers have made clear that these Video games will go on and the athletes will probably be topic to strict protocols, together with requiring vaccinations, maintaining them remoted contained in the Olympic “bubble” and never permitting them out among the many citizenry.
One fascinating factor to observe is the efficiency of athletes from the host nation at these Video games. China will not be identified for winter sports activities and within the lead as much as these Olympics has employed worldwide coaches to teach its athletes in hopes of inspiring extra Chinese language to attempt snowboarding, snowboarding, determine skating and different winter sports activities and thus make the nation a extra important presence on the worldwide stage.
As for opening week sports activities to observe, curling kicks issues off Wednesday, with the U.S. going through Australia. Ladies’s hockey then faces off on Thursday, with Staff USA opening its protection of its 2018 gold medal with a preliminary contest towards Finland.
Determine skating then will get going Friday, with the lads’s quick program, ice dance rhythm dance and pairs quick program previous to the opening ceremony. And on Saturday, freestyle snowboarding makes its first look with the ultimate in males’s moguls, during which Canada’s Kingsbury will try and defend his gold medal from 2018 in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
— Zap2It
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