First medals up for grabs at the Beijing Winter Olympics

The first gold medals of the Beijing Winter Olympics will be awarded on Saturday as hosts China hope that the sport will roar to the fore after a troubled build-up dominated by coronavirus and rights concerns.

The first medals come in cross-country skiing, in the women’s 7.5-plus-7.5-kilometer skiathlon.

Among the competitors in that event will be Dinigeer Yilamujiang, a 20-year-old Uyghur athlete chosen by China as one of two athletes to light the cauldron in Friday’s opening ceremony.

Campaigners say at least one million people from mostly Muslim minorities, notably Uyghurs, have been incarcerated in “re-education camps” in the Xinjiang region.

The United States, Britain, Canada, and Australia are among countries staging a diplomatic boycott of the Games over China’s rights record, and particularly the fate of the Uyghurs.

Asked whether the inclusion of a Uyghur competitor in a ceremony featuring several generations of Chinese athletes met the International Olympic Committee’s standard of political neutrality, IOC spokesman Mark Adams said she had “every right” to participate.

“As you’ll know from the Olympic Charter, we don’t discriminate against people on where they’re from, what their background is,” he said.

“I think the concept of having all the generations there was a really excellent one.”

– Message of peace –
The snowflake-themed opening ceremony in the “Bird’s Nest” was dazzling but less spectacular than the extravaganza that brought the curtain up on the Beijing Summer Olympics in the same stadium 14 years ago.

Before Chinese President Xi Jinping declared the Games open, IOC chief Thomas Bach appealed to “all political authorities across the globe”, urging them to “give peace a chance”.

“In our fragile world, where division, conflict, and mistrust are on the rise, we show the world — yes, it is possible to be fierce rivals while at the same time living peacefully and respectfully together,” Bach said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, at loggerheads with the US and much of Europe over the build-up of troops on the Ukrainian border, was among the leaders who did attend the ceremony.

Xi, under whose rule China has adopted a far more muscular attitude internationally compared to 14 years ago, was given a rapturous welcome by the socially distanced crowd wearing face masks.

The Games will run until February 20 and are taking place inside a vast “closed-loop” bubble designed to thwart the virus.

The nearly 3,000 athletes and tens of thousands of support staff, volunteers, and media have been cut off from Beijing’s general population.

There have been more than 350 Covid-19 cases in the bubble, among them an unknown number of athletes.

Germany’s three-time Olympic Nordic Combined champion Eric Frenzel will miss his first event on Wednesday because he tested positive for coronavirus on arrival in Beijing, his team said.

China, where the virus emerged in late 2019, has pursued a no-nonsense zero-Covid policy and adopted the same approach to the Games, with everyone inside the bubble tested daily and required to wear a mask at all times.

– Medal race begins –
Later Saturday, Canadian freestyle skier Mikael Kingsbury will attempt to win the gold medal for a second consecutive Olympics in the bone-shaking mogul’s event under floodlights in Zhangjiakou.

Then on Sunday, Norwegian skier Aleksander Aamodt Kilde is the favourite in the high-speed men’s downhill — traditionally one of the highlights of a Winter Olympics.

Kilde’s American girlfriend Mikaela Shiffrin meanwhile admitted she would be disappointed to leave Beijing without a medal, but warned it was impossible to have a flawless Games.

Shiffrin is one of the headlines acts in Beijing 2022 as she pursues a third gold after triumphing in slalom at the 2014 Sochi Games and giant slalom four years later in Pyeongchang.

“I’ve never in my life had three weeks where I had no regrets and no disappointment,” Shiffrin said. “At the Olympics, it’s impossible to have the perfect two weeks.”