BeforeWinter Olympic Games in Beijing a year remains, the excitement among athletes and fans around the world is growing.
Winter sports representatives will gather in the Chinese capital and Zhangjiakou from 4 to 20 February 2022 to compete for 109 sets of Olympic medals.
The legacy of the 2008 Olympic Games held in China will be fully utilized by the Olympic Winter Games Organizing Committee. Competitions are planned to be held at 13 venues. And only 2 of them are newly built, the remaining 11 are from the 2008 Summer Olympic Games.
Three zones will be allocated for the competition:
- Central Beijing: opening ceremony, ice hockey, figure skating, speed skating, curling, ice hockey.
- Yanqing County in the northwest of Beijing Administrative Region: luge, skeleton, bobsleigh, alpine skiing.
- Zhangjiakou City in Hebei Province: freestyle, snowboarding, cross-country skiing, biathlon, ski jumping.
As in 2008, the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympic Games will be held at the Bird's Nest National Stadium in Beijing, with a capacity of 91,000 people. The opening date of the Olympics (February 4, 2022) coincides with the Chinese New Year (Spring Festival) according to the lunar calendar.
Competitions at the 2022 Games in Beijing
Beijing 2022 will host competitions in15 disciplines in seven sports: biathlon, bobsleigh (including skeleton), curling, ice hockey, luge, figure skating, short track speed skating and speed skating, alpine skiing, cross-country skiing, freestyle, Nordic combined, ski jumping and snowboarding.
A total of 109 sets of medals will be played, seven more than in Pyeongchang 2018. New disciplines include bobsleigh, short track, ski freestyle, ski jumping and snowboarding.
New disciplines include women's singles bobsleigh or monobob, which were successfully tested at the 2016 and 2020 Youth Olympics in Lillehammer and Lausanne. Others are men's and women's Big Air Ski, Mixed Team Ski Acrobatics, Mixed Team Ski Jumping, Mixed Snowboard Cross Relay and Mixed Short Track Relay.
The Beijing Olympics will be the most gender-balanced in the history of the Winter Games. Compared to 2018, the percentage of women will grow from 41 to over 45.
Beijing 2022 Stars
As always, the Olympic Games will bring together the brightest stars of their sports.China pins great hopes onEileen Gu, three-time Freestyle World Cup winner and two-time Lausanne Youth Olympic Champion. The hosts expect no less from the short track team and its leaderWu Dajing, the reigning Olympic champion and world record holder at a distance of 500 meters.
Biathlon fans will follow the Norwegian nugget and the reigning Olympic champion at a distance of 20 kilometersJohannes Be… He will try to follow the path of his longtime rival Martin Fourcade, who ended his career with five Olympic gold medals.
Hockey tournament in Pyeongchang passed without playersNHL… By agreement between the league and the hockey players' union, they must come to Beijing. The final decision has yet to be agreed with the IIHF and the IOC, but the tournament in any case promises a lot of interesting things.Canadians will do everything to regain the league title, and the US team has not won since the distant 1980.
Figure skating, as usual, will be one of the most popular sports with spectators around the world.Yuzuru Hanyu will try to win the men's singles competition for the third time in a row, which no one has been able to do since 1928. His main competitor looks like a two-time world championNathan Chen.
Michaela Shiffrin remains one of the best skiers to start in Beijing. The American continues to pursue Ingemar Stenmark, who holds the record for the most victories at the World Cup stages (86) in history. Shiffrin won gold at the Olympic Games in Sochi and Pyeongchang and intends to replenish her collection.
Another AmericanChloe Kim, who became the youngest Olympic snowboarding champion in Pyeongchang in 2018, will try to win the halfpipe again.
Beijing 2022 stadiums
Beijing is the host city of the Olympics. But in fact, the Games will be held in three clusters: in fact, inBeijing, inYanqing northwest of the capital and inZhangjiakou… Although it is located 200 km from Beijing, it takes an hour to get there by high speed train.
The opening and closing ceremonies of the Games will take place at the Beijing National Stadium, also known as the Bird's Nest. It was also the main arena for the 2008 Games. All ice competitions will take place in the Beijing cluster. The Beijing National Swimming Complex, which is called the Water Cube, has been converted to curling. The Metropolitan Sports Palace will host figure skating and short track speed skating. Hockey will take place at the State Sports Palace and at the Ukeson Arena.
On the newNational Speed Skating Stadium skating competition will take place. A temporary arena will be built for big air for snowboarders and freestylers west of central Beijing.
Alpine skiing, bobsleigh, skeleton and luge competitions will be held in Yanqing at the ski centerXiaohaito… Other snow competitions will be hosted by Zhangjiakou, an urban district in Hebei province.
Beijing 2022 calendar
The opening ceremony is scheduled forFebruary 4, 2022, and the closing ceremony is atFebruary 16, 2022… The competition will begin two days before the official opening - with the preliminary round of the curling tournament.
Beijing 2022 mascot and logo
Official mascot Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics is a giant panda namedBing Dundong (冰 墩墩).
Bin is Chinese for ice, but it also means purity and strength. "Dundong" symbolizes children. The talisman personifies the strength of the body and will of athletes. Bing Dongdong is committed to promoting the Olympic spirit.
The emblem is based on the hieroglyph for winter (冬). It depicts a skater at the top and a skier at the bottom. In the middle you can see picturesque mountains, ski slopes and ice rinks that will host the Games.
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