A Beijing Winter Olympics which saw sporting drama and milestones but was tarnished by a Russian doping scandal ended on Sunday with an uplifting closing ceremony.
The Games will be remembered for new stars such as Eileen Gu but also for the doping controversy which engulfed 15-year-old figure skater Kamila Valieva and because they took place inside a vast Covid-secure “bubble”.
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The “Bird’s Nest” stadium, which also took centre stage when Beijing hosted the 2008 Summer Games, was the scene for a celebratory, snowflake-themed closing ceremony attended by President Xi Jinping and a socially distanced crowd seated among red lanterns.
Declaring the Games closed and handing over to 2026 hosts Milano-Cortina, International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach hailed an “unforgettable Olympic experience”.
And Bach is right — these Games will be difficult to forget — but for all the wrong reasons and none of the ones he highlighted in Sunday’s address.
“Unforgettably sinister, that is,” The Telegraph’s Oliver Brown wrote.
Concerns about human rights had dominated the build-up, with the United States leading a diplomatic boycott by its closest allies over China’s rights record, especially the fate of the Muslim Uyghur minority in Xinjiang.
China warned in the fraught lead-up that foreign athletes criticising the authorities could face consequences.
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As a result, Brown writes, “what should have been a glorious tapestry of winter sport has been reimagined as a succession of scandals”.
“It only emphasises the scandalous illogicality of how we ended up in China at all,” he added.
“At one stage, Yan Jiarong, a spokeswoman for the local organisers, interrupted an official press conference to denounce reports of Chinese genocide against the Uyghur community as “based on lies”, while insisting that Taiwan should be regarded as indivisible from mainland China.
“Beside her, Mark Adams, Bach’s right-hand man, offered not one word to challenge this agitprop. The organisation he represents has become the planet’s most expensive PR agency for autocrats.”
While denounced from doing so, there were some athletes who spoke out against holding the Games in Beijing, although a few waited until they had left to do so.
“I think it is extremely irresponsible to give it to a country that violates human rights as blatantly as the Chinese regime is doing,” speed skater Nils van der Poel said.
“I really think it’s terrible, but I think I shouldn’t say too much about it, because we still have a squad in China.”
That fear was real for Gus Kenworthy, a British freeskier who highlighted his concerns for China’s LGBT community, as an openly gay man himself.
“I am absolutely a fan of the Olympics,” Kenworthy said after finishing eighth in the halfpipe final on Saturday.
“I also think, that being said, because it’s the world stage and everyone is watching, there is an opportunity to create positive change and the IOC could help dictate that change by pushing on certain issues. Those issues are human rights issues.
“When there’s human rights and the country’s stance on LGBT, those issues should be taken into consideration by the IOC (in selecting host nations).”
We are also going to remember the tears from 15-year-old Valieva, catapulting her to the forefront of yet another Russian doping controversy to mar an Olympics and piling intense pressure on the teenager.
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In what will go down as a notorious episode in the history of the Winter Olympics, the pre-tournament favourite for singles gold fell several times on the ice in the finals, to audible gasps from the socially distanced crowd of hand-picked spectators.
Her doping case looks certain to drag on in the coming months, long after the Games have packed up. She was allowed to skate in the Chinese capital but has not been cleared of doping.
“It was a spectacle that strayed uncomfortably close to child abuse: a disturbing epitaph, perhaps, for the bleakest Games,” Brown wrote.
Two-time Winter Olympic champion Katarina Witt also broke down in tears watching the treatment of Valieva, who she says was “thrown to the wolves”.
“What has happened now is the very worst,” Witt, said on German broadcaster ARD.
“She fell apart because of it. This is actually unbearable. She’s a 15-year-old kid and she’s broken from it. She’s really been thrown to the wolves now.
“She was a shadow of her former self when she walked out of there. She couldn’t win in this whole game.”
It, of course, was not all negative, not all a bleak reminder of the lowest depths of humanity.
Since the opening ceremony on February 4, a new global star emerged in the form of 18-year-old freestyle skier Gu, who was born in California but switched to China in 2019 and became the unofficial face of the Games.
There was a new men’s figure skating champion in 22-year-old Nathan Chen of the United States, who dethroned two-time Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu, in what could be the Japanese legend’s final appearance at a Games.
There were numerous records — among them American bobsleigher Elana Meyers Taylor becoming the most decorated Black athlete in the history of the Winter Olympics.
Snowboarder Zoi Sadowski Synnott made history for New Zealand, winning her country’s first Winter Games gold.
And yet, that is not what these Games will be remembered by, as Noah Hoffman, a former cross-country skier who represented the USA at two Olympics, pointed out.
“The IOC definitely made the wrong choice to send the Games to Beijing,” he said.
“When we and the athletes look back on these games in a year, in four years at the next cycle, in 10 years, we’re not going to remember these Games for Nils’ (van der Poel) two gold medals.
“Instead we’re going to remember the way these Games were used to bolster two different authoritarian governments, the first being China (and Russia).
“They’re using an IOC press conference, ostensibly this apolitical venue, to question the sovereignty of Taiwan, to dispute the existence of forced labour in Xinjiang.
“It’s mind-boggling. We saw the parading around of Peng Shuai, to deny allegations of sexual assault. Those are the things we’re going to remember.”