Today in a nutshell: All eyes turn to the Bird’s Nest stadium in Beijing for the opening ceremony after three days of sporting preliminaries.
Next up: The Games start in earnest on Saturday with the first medals available, but China will be sensitive to the levels of global protest coinciding with the official opening of a controversial Games.
The stadium at the Winter Olympics is often criticised on cost and environmental grounds because it has been built specifically to hold the opening and closing ceremonies, and not much else. However, Beijing’s National Stadium doesn’t face that charge. Today it becomes the first stadium to host a Winter Olympics opening ceremony after having been built for the Summer Games. There have been suggestions that some athletes might boycott the ceremony in protest over China’s human rights record, but the US delegation say they are expecting around 80% of their contingent to attend, despite media reports to the contrary.
There’s already been some sport. British interest has mostly been confined to the curling, where the mixed doubles pair of reigning world champions Jennifer Dodds and Bruce Mouat have won three of their opening four matches, following a tight game on Friday morning against Australia. Italy lead the round-robin stage so far, unbeaten after four matches. The Alpine skier Dave Ryding and curler Eve Muirhead have been chosen as Team GB’s flag-bearers for the opening ceremony.
We’ve also had the opening skirmishes in the women’s ice hockey competition. Slightly oddly, every team in Group A (Canada, Switzerland, Finland, the US and the team from the Russian Olympic Committee) are already guaranteed a quarter-final slot, so these match-ups are just about jockeying for position and playing yourself into form. In Group B the Czech Republic, Japan, Denmark, Sweden and hosts China are scrapping for the remaining three berths. The main news so far though has been that the US assistant captain, Brianna Decker, suffered a sickening leg injury that will sideline her for the rest of the tournament. It didn’t stop the US demolishing Finland 5-2 as they opened their title defence.
Elsewhere, the third round of training for women’s ski jumping was cancelled due to windy conditions, while Norway’s Aleksander Aamodt Kilde set the fastest time in the men’s downhill, with athletes concerned about the gusty conditions. Organisers say nine more athletes and officials tested positive for Covid in cases confirmed on Thursday. A strong performance by Nathan Chen in the short programme helped the US into the lead ahead of the Russian Olympic Committee and China in the team figure skating event after three rounds.
Things you might have missed
Donald McRae interviewed skier Gus Kenworthy, who will compete for Team GB in his third and final Olympics as a gay man, an LGBTQ+ activist and an actor. He told Donald: “I’m just much happier now than I was back then when I wasn’t living my life authentically. I wasn’t being my true self and it definitely took a toll.”
You might also enjoy reading:
10 things to look out for in Beijing by Sean Ingle and Bryan Armen Graham
Spectre of 1936 and 1980 haunts Beijing as fear and repression breed silence
The Georgian luger racing 12 years after his cousin’s death at Olympics
Guardian US writers predict the victors at the Winter Olympics
If you’re watching from Australia, here’s what you need to know
The briefing’s picture of the day
Thursday saw qualification runs in the freestyle skiing for both the men’s and women’s moguls, and I suspect this is not the last picture of people on skis flying upside down through the air we will have in the newsletter.
Mikael Kingsbury of Canada topped the men’s qualifying, with Australia’s Jakara Anthony placed first in the women’s qualification. The men’s competition continues on Saturday, the women the day after.
What to look out for next
Times are all in local Beijing time. For Sydney it is +3 hours, for London it is -8 hours, for New York it is -13 hours and San Francisco is -16 hours.
Later today – Friday 4 February
8pm Opening Ceremony – scheduled to last for around an hour and 40 minutes – though these things have been known to go on for longer – the time difference means that you’ll be watching this at 11pm in Sydney, at noon in the UK, 7am in New York and 4am in San Francisco ✨✨✨
Tomorrow – Saturday 5 February
9am and 2pm and 8pm Curling – more mixed doubles round-robin matches 🥌
12.10pm and 4.40pm and 9.10pm Ice hockey – women’s preliminary round matches, of which the last one is the US v Not Russia 🏒
3.45pm Cross-country skiing – the women compete in the 7.5km + 7.5km skiathlon 🥇
4.30pm Speed skating – the women’s 3,000m 🥇
5pm Biathlon – it is the 4x6km mixed relay. The teams will be cross-country skiing, then breaking off to do some shooting and it should be fun 🥇
6pm – 8.40pm Freestyle skiing – there’s a qualification round and then three runs of the men’s moguls culminating in the medal ceremony 🥇
7pm Short track speed skating – there are heats for the women’s 500m and men’s 1,000m, then from 8.23pm it is the mixed team relay event with the final set for 9.26pm 🥇
7.10pm Luge – the men’s singles start their first two competitive runs
7.35pm Ski jumping – the final round of the women’s normal hill individual contest will see them soaring for gold. Or crashing spectacularly. One or the other, assuming the wind has died down a bit 🥇
Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics schedule: our full programme with details of every event.
How things stood
Here’s what the medal table looked like at the end of 2018 Pyeongchang Games in South Korea. We can expect to see China much higher up this time around. Russian athletes will again be competing under the banner of the Russian Olympic Committee rather than their national flag as part of Wada’s punishment for state-sanctioned doping. Team GB chiefs have set their sights on their greatest ever Winter Olympics medal haul, between three and seven medals, a tally that could take the team past the record of five set in Sochi in 2014 and equalled in 2018.
1 🇳🇴 Norway 🥇 14 🥈 14 🥉 11 total: 39
2 🇩🇪 Germany 🥇 14 🥈 10 🥉 7 total: 31
3 🇨🇦 Canada 🥇 11 🥈 8 🥉 10 total: 29
4 🇺🇸 US 🥇 9 🥈 8 🥉 6 total: 23
5 🇳🇱 Netherlands 🥇 8 🥈 6 🥉 6 total: 20
Selected others:
13 ◻️ Not Russia 🥇 2 🥈 6 🥉 9 total: 17
16 🇨🇳 China 🥇 1 🥈 6 🥉 2 total: 9
19 🇬🇧 Great Britain 🥇 1 🥈 0 🥉 4 total: 5
23 🇦🇺 Australia 🥇 0 🥈 2 🥉 1 total: 3
26 🇳🇿 New Zealand 🥇 0 🥈 0 🥉 2 total: 2
Don’t forget you can get in touch at martin.belam@theguardian.com to let me know what you are enjoying – or not – about the Winter Olympics and these newsletters. Enjoy the opening ceremony, and I will see you tomorrow. But here’s today’s last word …
The last word
I explained how millions of Uyghurs are being arbitrarily detained in concentration camps. The IOC was told survivors’ stories of rapes and torture, forced sterilisation and repression. And about families who have not heard from relatives for years. All of us shared personal experiences of loss and sacrifice. And do you know what the first thing that [the then] IOC vice-president, Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr, said? ‘The world is a complicated place’” – Zumretay Arkin, who fled Xinjiang when she was 10 years old.
