“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Beijing Games 2022! Let me hear your voice!” And so to the Ice Cube for the mixed curling for an intriguing first day of action at these XXIV Winter Olympics. Before the opening stone was cast, a Chinese military band of bagpipers dressed in kilts blasted out Scotland the Brave, while a dancing panda mascot pulled shapes.
Unlike at the Tokyo Summer Games last year, a select band of about 200 spectators were also on hand to watch this most slow burning of sports – although whether the crowd was quietly enthralled, or merely bored, was unclear until they exploded into sustained cheers after China won a sudden-death match over Switzerland.
These Games do not officially kick off until Friday’s opening ceremony, but after a week dominated by criticism from human rights groups and rising Covid cases inside the Olympic bubble, with 11 people now hospitalised, organisers will be relieved that some of the world’s focus can now be diverted towards the field of play.
That message was conveyed by the front page of the China Daily’s Winter Olympics supplement. Its headline? “Gold Vision: How President Xi’s leadership is delivering ‘fantastic, extraordinary and excellent’ Winter Games’.
“Beijing’s vision of hosting a sustainable Winter Olympics is materialising in a big way, with the Games’ venues and projects primed to benefit local communities and the economy far beyond the closing ceremony,” was the message.
The official mouth organ for the Chinese government also hailed the three curling tournaments – which are all 10-team round-robin events, leading to a semi-final and final – and the fact the games are being staged at the same venue where Michael Phelps won a record eight Olympic gold medals.
Incredibly after a feat of engineering worthy of Brunel, what was nicknamed the Water Cube in 2008 has temporarily become the Ice Cube.
Sculptured and sprayed
The work has required organisers to completely drain the 50m pool before complex scaffolding and mounting plates went in, and an insulating and waterproof layer were put down. Finally a removable ice making system was installed and the ice was sculptured and sprayed. And, just like that, a 10-lane Olympic swimming pool became a four-sheet curling rink.
A range of sensors in the building are designed to monitor the temperature of the ice and facility. But there were some understandable teething issues, with the British team struggling to read the ice as it slowed during the course of their match.
While Britain, the USA and many western countries have announced they will stage a diplomatic boycott of the Games, Russia’s president Vladimir Putin is coming to Beijing, and Saudi Arabia leader Mohammed bin Salman and Pakistan’s Imran Khan are expected to attend the opening ceremony. Putin and Xi are also expected to sign a deal to increase capacity of the Power of Siberia, a 2,485-mile pipeline that transfers gas from eastern Russia to China.
That is another sign that sport and politics are intertwined – and Putin, of course, will watch Russia’s athletes competing in their third consecutive Olympics without their flag and national anthem.
– Guardian
