Comment: 26 days in the Chinese Olympic bubble revealed a bunch of nonsense

ZHANGJIAKOU. For breakfast. Throat corona test. To the bus and the race venue. From there, end the day back at the hotel and sleep in the bubble hotel.

Routines are also formed in the corona bubble. The journeys in Zhangjiakou’s bubble are very short. There is a maximum of half an hour between Nordic skiing, biathlon, snowboarding and freestyle competitions.

Arrangements are at least good if not excellent if you focus only on watching the sport.

In many ways, the Beijing Olympics were exceptionally great for Finns. Finland grabbed six medals in cross-country skiing. The last surprise was in Sarajevo in 1984. Iivo Niskanen grabbed straight-line Olympic medals in one of the games. No such thing had been seen by Finns since 1960. Niskane also became the fourth Finn to have won Olympic gold in three consecutive games.

The Finnish men’s national hockey team won the first Olympic gold medals in its history.

After devoting thoughts to non-sports over the course of 26 bubble days, you will notice that many things were at stake in the competition.

Let’s start with the fact that Zhangjiakou is written as the first word in many things, like this one. In fact, I have no idea what the city of Zhangjiakou really looks like. It should be a city of 4.5 million people, but there is no observation of it in the Olympic bubble. Just a mountain view and structures made for the Olympics. In detail, during the 26 days spent in solitary confinement, I did not see any children.

Life was very limited. The hotel was not very far off until the fences arrived. The same situation was in the competition venues.

Indeed, it quickly became clear that a bubble like 11,000 people would hardly have been possible elsewhere than in an authoritarian state like China.

Strict corona protocols felt quite a theater. An example is the mobile phone application, to which all bubble workers had to update their fever readings two weeks before departure and also during their entire stay in the bubble. At the same time, it was asked if there were any symptoms suggestive of a corona. One can only guess how many actually measured their temperature with a thermometer each day or whether they just threw the readings at appropriate intervals from day to day.

Perhaps less would have been enough for everyone to live safely in the Olympics.

If there has been anything good at the Olympics, many around the world will hopefully begin to understand China’s actions toward its own citizens and, through it, the world of thought instilled in the Chinese. Allegations of human rights abuses against Uighurs in the headlines have perhaps been more prominent.

During the 26 bubble days, one thing made the Chinese slip out of the strict instructions that came from above and the strict control imposed on them. It was moments with the country’s big sports stars. When Finnish journalists waited for the big Air qualifier Rene Rinnekangasta from a party-like reset of disappointment, there was a different kind of hustle and bustle in the interview area.

The toughest single trick points in the qualifier Su Yiming collected got the locals confused. In addition to the TV groups, a lot of race workers gathered around Yiming who wanted their own memory of the snowboarding star. A large number of self-portraits were clicked.

Also perhaps the biggest star of the race, the freestyle skier Eileen Gu, received similar treatment. Local race workers bonged two Olympic victories at the Gun Hotel’s lobby bar to celebrate after the race contract. Then it was fun to follow. They did not try to approach Guta at first, but took pictures shyly from afar.

When a few dared to get closer and even share photos, the show was over. Gu had to run into the locals. At that point, instructions were no longer given to what they had been told to repeat to the race guests every day. Among other things, about safety distances or the use of hand gloves.

The organizing committee of the Beijing Olympic Games has also solemnly spoken before the Games about its green values ​​and how the arenas of the 2008 Summer Olympics have also been utilized at the Winter Olympics. Lions, for example, played medal matches at the National Indoor Stadium, where they competed in handball and gymnastics less than 14 years ago.

However, most of the competition venues are built for the Olympics. Nordic skiing, biathlon, snowboarding and freestyle have been competed at Zhangjiakou 180 kilometers northwest.

The pace of construction has been quite. A photo taken from the top of the nearby ski resort in Thailand in the fall of 2018 shows how there was no information about the ski jumping center and other competition venues yet.

Of course, there have been similar problems in other Olympic Games, when the built venues have been left empty and budgets have been exceeded.

There is still a great need in the future for the exceptionally successful Zhangjiakou race tracks in Finland. You can search for a reference point even at previous Winter Olympics. There have been few top international competitions on previous Olympic tracks. At least constantly. The previous Nordic skiing venues for active international competition are from Lillehammer in 1994.

Subsequent race hosts have had individual World Cup competitions from time to time.

So, compared to previous winter races, the races in Zhangjiakou are unlikely to be seen for a long time or not at all.

Skiing is not a form of power in China anyway. It’s hard to see that Chinese fitness enthusiasts would be seen skiing on the steep slopes otherwise only. The ski resorts may have hope, as there are Chinese enthusiasts in the sport from behind and the bullet train connection built to the Games around Zhanjiakou and Beijing is creating some kind of spark of hope for the post-crown activity. There have been snowboarding and freestyle before the World Cup in the Zhangjiakou area anyway.

However, the situation for Nordic skiing and biathlon is different, of course partly due to the corona pandemic and China’s strict rules.

The finger points strongly to the decision-making of the International Olympic Committee. When the Games were awarded to Beijing at the end of July 2015, the opposite was the city of Kazakhstan and Almaty.

Equally, after all 26 bubble days, the Games may well be summed up in one question: What was the point in such an Olympics?

I hope that such Olympics will never be held again.