Here’s what you need to know ahead of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics

(CNN) — Just a few weeks to go until the Winter Olympic Games in Beijing, the seconds that are celebrated in the midst of the pandemic after last year’s summer in Tokyo.

Beijing will become the first city to host both the Summer and Winter Games following its Olympic debut in 2008, and organizers last month said preparations were “very well under way” for the Games to go ahead as planned. what was planned.

But it has not been easy. As with last year’s Summer Olympics, a series of measures to prevent Covid-19 have been put in place ahead of the Games, which will again be held in a Covid-proof “bubble” system.

The Winter Olympics will start with the opening ceremony on February 4 and end with the closing ceremony on February 20, with nearly 3,000 athletes competing in 15 disciplines in 109 events.

Next, Beijing will also host the Paralympic Games, which will be held from March 4 to 13.

How will the Games be organized in the midst of the pandemic?

Organizers intend to hold the 2022 Beijing Games in a closed-loop system accessible only to participants, a plan that has remained in place amid the rapid spread of the omicron variant of the coronavirus.

As indicated in a Games manual published in December, the closed circuit system will cover the venues, the official hotels and the event’s own transport service.

Fully vaccinated participants will be able to enter the closed circuit without going through quarantine, while those who are not vaccinated will have to quarantine for 21 days upon arrival in Beijing.

Medical exemptions may be granted, studied on a case-by-case basis, to those who are not vaccinated. Some countries, such as the United States and Canada, have required all team members to be vaccinated.

During the Games, participants will undergo daily health checks and tests and will not have contact with the general public.

“The circuit is very safe. It is a place that I would say is very difficult to compare with anywhere else in the world at the moment, because we have a fully vaccinated population here, often with boosters, who undergo daily PCR tests. and that it lives in a closed circuit,” Pierre Ducrey, director of Olympic Games operations for the International Olympic Committee (IOC), told reporters on January 12.

Ducrey added: “It’s called a closed loop for that very reason. It means there will be no contact between people outside and inside the loop. It’s been built to protect the population inside and outside as well.”

Confirmation of a positive result will mean that the participants will not be able to compete or continue to participate in the Games; those who are symptomatic will remain in a designated hospital for treatment, while those who are asymptomatic will be transferred to an isolation facility.

Last month, Huang Chun, a member of the local organizing committee, accepted that the Games could bring to China “cases of covid-19 or small groups of infections”, since “a large number of foreign personnel will gather, which poses a very high risk of transmission” .

In the course of the pandemic, the country has applied a zero covid policy with large-scale testing, extensive quarantines and sudden lockdowns to eradicate any outbreak of the virus.

Will fans attend?

Tickets for the Games will not be sold to the general public in response to the pandemic, but will be distributed by authorities, the Beijing Winter Olympics Organizing Committee announced on Jan. 17.

“Considering the grim and complex situation of epidemic prevention and control [y] In order to protect the health and safety of Olympic staff and spectators, we have decided to change the original ticketing plan to the public,” the committee said.

The public will still have to “strictly comply with the COVID-19 prevention and control requirements before, during and after watching the Games,” the committee continued.

The announcement comes after Beijing reported its first case of the highly transmissible omicron variant of the new coronavirus on January 15.

Where are the headquarters?

Although the Chinese capital, Beijing, is the official venue for the Games, the venues are divided into three zones: Beijing; Yanqing, a mountainous district 75 kilometers northwest of Beijing, and Zhangjiakou, a ski and snowboard destination 100 kilometers from Yanqing.

Of the 13 venues that will host the events, one, the National Speed ​​Skating Oval, is newly built in Beijing, while existing venues have been renovated for the Games.

The Beijing National Stadium, commonly known as the Bird’s Nest, will host the opening and closing ceremonies.

Each of the three zones has its own Olympic Village, and all three are connected by a newly built intercity railway.

Who are the Olympic and Paralympic mascots?

The mascot for the Winter Olympics are Bing Dwen Dwen, a panda dressed in a full-body “shell” made of ice, and Shuey Rhon Rhon for the Paralympics, a kind of Chinese lantern-boy.

Bing Dwen Dwen (Bing means “ice” in Mandarin Chinese, while Dwen Dwen means “child”) was chosen from more than 5,800 entries from around the world.

The “shell” design allows the panda, China’s national animal, to skate, snowboard and ski.

According to him Paralympic Games website, Shuey has the same pronunciation as the Chinese character for ‘snow’, the first Rhon means ‘to include, tolerate’, and the second Rhon means ‘to melt, fuse and heat’.

What is the political controversy surrounding Beijing 2022?

The United States, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom are among the countries that have announced a diplomatic boycott of the Winter Olympics.

That means athletes from those countries will still be able to compete in Beijing, but no government officials will attend.

In December, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the boycott would serve as a “clear message” against the “genocide and crimes against humanity that China is committing in Xinjiang.”

According to the US State Department, up to two million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities are believed to have passed through detention centers in Xinjiang, which the Chinese government insists are “vocational training centers” meant to alleviate poverty and combat religious extremism.

Following the announcement of the US diplomatic boycott, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian stated that the United States should “stop politicizing sports and exaggerating the so-called ‘diplomatic boycott’ so as not to affect dialogue and cooperation between China and the United States in important areas.

As for athletes, controversies surrounding the Games can pose a moral dilemma. Last year, American ski star Mikaela Shiffrin, a three-time Olympic medalist, told CNN that “you certainly don’t want to be put in the position of having to choose between human rights, morality, and being able to do your job.”

Who are the athletes to watch?

Shiffrin, who recently returned to the alpine skiing World Cup circuit after falling ill with covid-19, will be one of the standout athletes in Beijing. At the last Winter Olympics held in PyeongChang (South Korea), he won gold in the giant slalom and silver in the alpine combined.

Other familiar faces of the American team will be snowboarder Shaun White, who expects these to be his last Olympic Games, 2018 halfpipe gold medalist Chloe Kim, the youngest woman to win an Olympic gold in snowboarding, and popular figure skater Nathan Chen.

Japan’s Yuzuru Hanyu, a two-time gold medalist in figure skating, will face Chen in his bid to win a third consecutive gold medal in the men’s singles event.

Mikael Kingsbury, the most decorated freestyle skier of all time, will also be heading to Beijing to try and defend his 2018 title.

China, which is not as dominant in the Winter Olympics compared to the Summer Games, won nine medals in 2018.

Among the host nation’s best prospects to win gold this time around is American-born freestyle skier EileenGu, who won the world champion titles in halfpipe and slopestyle last year.

According to the sports data company Gracenote, Norway, whose athletes often excel in cross-country skiing and biathlon, is expected to lead the medal table with 45 medals, ahead of Russian Olympic Committee, with 32, Germany, with 25, and the United States and Canada, with 22.

Why will North Korea miss the Games?

One of the countries that has announced that it will not send athletes to Beijing is North Korea.

According to the state-run KCNA news agency, a letter sent by the North Korean Olympic Committee and Ministry of Physical Culture and Sports to its Chinese counterpart cites “hostile forces” and the global pandemic as reasons for its non-participation, and the United States and its allies are accused of trying to prevent the success of the inaugural Olympic Games.

The United States and its allies are “increasingly conspicuous in their moves against China to prevent the successful start of the Olympics,” the letter said, which did not explicitly cite the diplomatic boycott.

Last year, the IOC suspended North Korea’s Olympic Committee until the end of 2022 as part of its punishment for its “unilateral decision” to drop out of the Tokyo Olympics, which prevented the country from formally competing in Beijing.

The IOC then said that if any North Korean athlete qualified for the Winter Olympics through the processes already underway, “it will make an appropriate decision in due time for the athlete(s) in question.”

North Korean athletes competed in the 2018 Games, marching alongside those from South Korea under one flag at the Opening Ceremony. A North Korean delegation was also sent to South Korea during the Games.

CNN’s Nectar Gan contributed to this article.