Beijing Winter Olympics: Athletes still on top at Xi Jinping’s sporting snowjob
The most bizarre, antiseptic Olympic Games opened at the Bird’s Nest in Beijing on Friday night.
The most bizarre, antiseptic Olympic Games opened at the Bird’s Nest in Beijing Friday night, with Olympic bosses desperate to have the world’s attention switch to colourful athlete action and paper across China’s human rights concerns that extends from the Uighurs in Xianjing to a clampdown on Olympic participants in a high fenced “closed loop”.
Australia’s flag-bearers, aerials hope Laura Peel and seven-time national figure skating champion Brendan Kerry, both three-time Olympians, led the Australian team as temperatures plummeted well below freezing, matching the chilly geopolitical tensions surrounding the Games.
“It’s such an honour and I’m truly grateful and so humbled to be able to lead the team into opening ceremony. Honestly, it feels like a dream,” said Peel, 32.
More than half of the 43 Australian athletes stayed at home in the warmth of the Olympic village to prepare for their competitions, with recent world cup-winning snowboarder Tess Coady in the slopestyle and PyeongChang silver medallist Matt Graham in the moguls, leading the action today.
Australia is tipped to have one of its best Winter Olympics on record, with team members in contention for a handful of medals. One of the top chances, X-Games snowboard winner Scotty James said: “I think we are an amazing Aussie team this time around and its going to be super special to watch everyone do what they do.”
Eighteen Australians marched on the ice as Chinese President Xi Jinping, dressed in a thick puffer jacket, looked on alongside Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin after the two had talks for a new gas deal hours earlier.
Political tensions swirled around, with Western nations staging a diplomatic boycott and India joining the symbolic protest. India was upset that China had selected a military commander, who was involved in a deadly skirmish with Indian forces on the eastern Ladakh border two years ago where 20 Indian soldiers were killed, to be part of the ceremony.
China also appeared to throw its support behind Russia in its inflammatory military build-up on the border with Ukraine. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un told Mr Xi that hosting the Winter Olympics was a “great victory”. But in the US, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned American athletes not to anger the “ruthless” Chinese government and keep any outspoken views to when they return home because of fears the Chinese government would retaliate.
The shortened extravaganza, invoking the themes of “one world, one family”, followed the story of a snowflake using hundreds of amateur dancers from local schools and universities and with tinges of militaristic flavour. It was a stark contrast in tone to China in 2008 when it hosted the Summer Olympics with precision drummers and a four-hour $100 million ceremony.
This show, created once again by Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou, was witnessed by a handpicked 20,000 spectators in the Bird’s Nest, who were invited to be part of the audience by the 2022 organisers.
Curler Tahli Gill, having to adhere to Covid restrictions and stay in relative isolation despite returning negative tests, was missing at the opening but her partner Dean Hewitt attended. Others who walked out onto the “ice’’ were short-track speed skater Brendan Corey, figure skater Kailani Craine, skeleton competitor Nick Timmings, the bobsledders Bree Walker, Kiara Reddingius and Sarah Blizzard, snowboard cross stars Belle Brockhoff, Adam Lambert, Adam Dickson, Josie Baff and Cam Bolton and cross-country skiers Phil Bellingham, Seve de Campo, Hugo Hinckfuss and Lars Young Vik.
International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach, an Olympic gold medal-winning fencer, repeated his claim that the Games brought the world together, but he has consistently parried away delicate political questions, including about the Uighurs in Xinjiang and one closer to home involving three-time Olympian Peng Shuai.
Mr Bach confirmed he would meet Peng in the coming days but insisted any inquiry into her sex assault allegations against the former Chinese vice-president Zhang Gaoli, with whom she had a relationship, must emanate from the tennis player. Mr Bach also made it clear that he wouldn’t be applying any soft pressure on the Chinese government over any concerns in the next 17 days of competition, least of all about the Uighurs.
In Lausanne, outside the IOC headquarters, hundreds of Tibetans staged a small protest. Police also arrested dissenters in Hong Kong as they attempted to stage an anti-Olympic protest.
Mr Bach, who only four years ago was pressing for a Nobel Peace Prize for bringing together North and South Korea in some events at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, said: “Our position must be not to comment on political issues. If we take a political standpoint and get in the middle of tensions, disputes and confrontations then we are putting the Games at risk … We must be politically neutral and not become a tool to achieve political goals.”
The Beijing Olympics threaten to be marked alongside the 1936 Berlin Olympics and the boycotted 1980 Moscow Games.
While human rights issues overshadow the Games, the Olympics will be remembered for highly restrictive and logistically difficult enforcement of a “closed loop” in place to try and stem rising coronavirus numbers.
On Friday, further positive cases were detected inside the Olympic Village, with more than 300 Olympic participants put into some form of isolation since January 23.
To date the Australian team has escaped the upheaval that has affected other teams who have had world and Olympic champions withdraw because of last-minute Covid infections, while other athletes have been put in isolation for 14 days.
Belgian skeleton competitor Kim Meylemans was only released from a Chinese Covid isolation facility after posting a tearful message on social media pleading to be allowed to isolate at the back of the Olympic Village rather than a soulless medical facility.
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