Winter Olympics 2022 opening ceremony: Pictures and news from Beijing
The Winter Olympics are officially underway, but not without controversy and tension between officials who have gathered in Beijing to mark the occasion. See full pictures from the event.
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The most bizarre, antiseptic Olympic Games opened at the Birds 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 Uighers in Xianjing to a clampdown on Olympic participants in a high fenced “closed loop”.
Australia’s flagbearers, 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.
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 medalist Matt Graham in the moguls, leading the action on Saturday.
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 premier Xi Jinping, dressed in a thick puffer jacket looked on alongside Russian president Vladimir Putin after the two had talks for a new gas deal hours earlier.
All the while political tensions swirled around, with Western nations staging a diplomatic boycott and Indian joining the symbolic protest. India was upset that China had selected a military commander 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 Kim Jong Un told Xi that hosting the winter Olympics was a “great victory”.
But in the United States the 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 flavor.
It was a stark contrast in tone to the coming out of China in 2008 when it hosted the Summer Olympics with precision drummers and a four hour $100 million extravaganza.
This ceremony, created once again by the Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou was witnessed by 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 restriction and stay in relative isolation despite returning negative covid 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, Sarah Blizzard, snow board cross stars Belle Brockhoff, Adam Lambert, Adam Dickson, Josie Baff, 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 Uighers in Xinjiang and one closer to home involving the three-time Olympian Peng Shuai.
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. 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 Uighers.
In Lausanne outside the IOC headquarters, hundreds of Tibetians staged a small protest. Police also arrested dissenters in Hong Kong as they attempted to stage an anti-Olympic protest.
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.”
These Beijing Olympics threaten to be marked in the annals of history alongside The 1936 Berlin Olympics and the 1980 boycotted Moscow Games.
While the human rights issues overshadow the Games, the Games will be remembered for highly restrictive and logistically difficult enforcement of a ‘’closed loop” in place to try and stem the rising numbers of coronavirus.
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.
But to date the Australian team has escaped the upheaval that has impacted other teams who have had world and Olympic champions having to 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 soul-less medical facility.
HISTORIC DUO GIVEN ULTIMATE OLYMPICS HONOUR
Julian Linden, in China
Aerial skier Laura Peel and figure skater Brendan Kerry have been chosen to carry the Australian flag at Friday’s Opening Ceremony for the Beijing Winter Olympics.
It marks the first time Australia has two flagbearers — one of each sex — at the Winter Olympics, although it’s happened twice at the Summer Games, in 1980 and again last year.
Competing at her third Olympics, Peel is the third aerialist to carry the Aussie flag after Alisa Camplin-Warner led the team at the Opening Ceremony for Turin in 2006 and Lydia Lassila took the job for the Closing Ceremony at Vancouver in 2010.
“This honour definitely goes to the top of the list,” said Peel, who is one of the favourites to win gold in Beijing. “Growing up I dreamed of being an Olympian and it’s always so special to pull on the green and gold, being a Flag Bearer is beyond anything I ever dreamed of. This is such an incredible team.
Kerry, another triple Olympian, said he thought he was in trouble when the team chef de mission Geoff Lipshut called him for a chat, oblivious that he was being told he was the first Australian figure skater to lead the team into the stadium.
“I was absolutely speechless when Geoff told me I was going to be a flag bearer,” Kerry said.
“It was the biggest shock and I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face. I am honoured. I honestly thought he was calling me because there was a big problem. Being an Olympian is special. For me, being a Winter Olympian is another level in a finite group. To be a flag bearer, now cast with that select group of winter athletes before me, is amazing.”
Lipshut said both team members deserved the honour for their long contributions to their sports.
“(Kerry has been involved in his sport from a very young age with a family heritage steeped in figure skating history,” Lipshut said.
“What a proud moment for Brendan and all his family, particularly his mother Monica, an Olympian from our 1988 Team competing in Calgary.
“Laura also is attending her third Olympic Games and arrives here in exceptional form. That really flows from her absolute professionalism and attention to detail as an athlete.”
WINTER OLYMPIC MEDAL HOPES (Times are AEDT)
* Men’s moguls (Matt Graham) - Saturday Feb 5 - 11.40pm
* Women’s Snowboard slopestyle (Tess Coady) - Sunday Feb 6 - 1.24pm
* Women’s moguls (Jakara Anthony) - Sunday Feb 6 - 11.40pm
* Women’s Snowboard cross (Belle Brockhoff) - Wednesday Feb 9 - 7pm
* Men’s Snowboard cross (Jarryd Hughes/Cam Bolton) - Thursday Feb 10 - 6.30pm
* Men’s Snowboard halfpipe (Scotty James) - Friday Feb 11 - 1.25pm
* Mixed Snowboard cross (Belle Brockhoff/Jarryd Hughes) - Saturday Feb 12 - 1pm
* Women’s monobob (Bree Walker) - Monday Feb 14 - 1pm
* Women’s aerials (Laura Peel and Danielle Scott) - Monday Feb 14 - 11pm
* Women’s Snowboard Big Air (Tess Coady) - Tuesday Feb 15 - 1.15pm
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Originally published as Winter Olympics 2022 opening ceremony: Pictures and news from Beijing
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