The Beijing Winter Olympics (February 4-20) will be held without natural snow. China also faces criticism due to the situation of the Uyghurs. And to complicate everything, the Covid-19 pandemic has pushed the country to do without spectators.
Funny situation for the Winter Olympics. Snow is sorely lacking on the various competition sites in Beijing, the city which becomes the first in history to host the Summer (2008) and Winter (2022) Olympics. As a result, the white coat will be 100% artificial. Fed by dams, a network of pipes allows the production of flakes.
Not very snowy landscapes
In 2014, in Sochi (Russia), 60% of the snow was artificial. The figure was 90% in Pyeongchang, South Korea, in 2018. In China, the region chosen to host the Olympic sites is known for its winter drought, it almost never snows despite the cold. ” There will not be very snowy landscapes. Extremely difficult conditions are announced in terms of temperature and wind. There are also environmental issues. It hurts my heart to see that they have razed the mountain, it’s a forest of lampposts, it’s not very natural “, lamented the French biathlete Chloé Chevalier. Beijing has assured that the electricity consumed during the Olympics will be entirely of renewable origin (wind turbines, solar panels, etc.).
“ I definitely would have preferred to go somewhere else. I don’t think we should organize championships or Games in this kind of country “Advanced Sebastian Samuelsson a few months ago in an interview with Swedish public television (SVT). Faced with human rights violations in Xinjiang province, several countries have decided on a diplomatic boycott of the Games, including the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada and Japan. Ironically, Beijing has not hesitated in the past to boycott the event for political reasons: after the Olympic Games in Helsinki in 1952, to protest against the presence of athletes from the rival regime of Taiwan, China will abstain to participate in it for a quarter of a century.
The presence of Roxana Maracineanu
It will be necessary to wait for the death of the founder of the regime, Mao Zedong, in 1976, for China to return to competition in 1980, during the Lake Placid Winter Games in the United States. The France will send its Minister of Sports. “ There will be a presence of the Minister Delegate for Sports, Roxana Maracineanu, probably not at the opening ceremony, but to support our athletes at some point during these Olympic Games. said Clément Beaune, Secretary of State for European Affairs
The organizing committee has announced that it will give up selling tickets to the general public due to a “complicated” epidemic situation with the Omicron variant. To avoid events without spectators, invitations could however be given to a handful of vaccinated people. ” With the pandemic, we may have to increase certain expenses “, recently admitted the communication manager of the Beijing Games, Zhao Weidong. ” But we can also reduce some of them “, he pointed out, without however advancing figures.
A “closed loop” to limit the spread of Covid-19
The additional cost linked to the Covid “ will not be integrated » to the final budget but to that of the policy sanitary, suspects Mr. Llorca. A way for the authorities, according to him, to boast of the Games ” successful and inexpensive “. The cost of the Olympic Games is usually doubled between the award date and the opening ceremony. The Beijing 2022 organizing committee had estimated ticketing revenue at $118 million.
Participants, athletes, volunteers, cooks, drivers and journalists will be kept in a “closed loop” to prevent any contact with the population and limit the risk of contamination. This health bubble requires a battery of measures to isolate these people from the outside world, as well as daily screening tests.
With AFP