In the mood for more snow? Tune in to the Winter Olympics starting this Friday
Kira Bretsky, Staff Writer
The 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing will be jam-packed, featuring 109 competitive events and about 3,000 athletes. With a panda mascot and nearly 50 million gallons of water in artificial snow, this year’s chilly winter olympics are expected to be a hair-raising set of games.
The Olympic Opening Ceremony will take place on Friday, Feb. 4, with the first medalist competitions set to begin on Saturday, Feb. 5. The games will continue for 15 days, with the concluding ceremony taking place on Sunday, Feb. 20. Beijing is 16 hours ahead of Santa Monica, but NBC will have tapes of the games available both online and on cable.
Each one of the 15 sports featured in the Winter Olympics is dependent on icy weather and Beijing is the perfect setting: winter temperatures are consistently 20 degrees Fahrenheit colder than New York City. Snowfall, however, is a different story: Beijing rarely exceeds five inches in a year. This year’s Olympics will rely on artificial snow, which all competing athletes are used to.
In light of the Omicron COVID-19 variant, the Beijing protocols are expected to be very strict; stricter, in fact, than the protocols of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Vaccination records and daily antigen tests will be mandated. The general public cannot purchase tickets to watch the competitions in person, with the exception of appropriately safety-screened government workers. The few spectators present will also have strict protocols: they may clap, but cheering is prohibited.
Among some of the world’s best and most-watched winter olympians is Jordan Stolz, a 17-year-old from Kewaskum, Wisconsin. Stolz is the third-youngest male to compete in speed skating for Team USA, and his recent record-breaking has set him apart from other young athletes. On Jan. 6, he broke the 1000-meter race record – which was previously set by two-time Olympic gold medalist Shani Davis.
China’s 18-year-old skier Eileen Gu and Norway’s 22-year-old snowboarder Marcus Kleveland are also on this year’s to-watch list. Both young athletes have promising careers, on and off the snow: Gu is a cover model for the popular magazine Elle, and Kleveland is rising to fame in Scandinavia through multiple social media platforms.
