2 l January
30 - February 5, 2022
Northeast Oregon TV Weekly
BY GEORGE DICKIE
Nathan Chen is among the the athletes
expected to compete in the 2022
Winter Olympics, which begin Friday
on NBC and NBCUniversal networks.
Back to Beijing: Chinese capital
hosts 2022 Winter Games
Your
Adventure
Awaits!
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Anyone who tuned into the Opening
Ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in
Beijing bore witness to an event they wouldn’t
soon forget.
The four-hour, nine-minute display of special
effects, lights and ingenuity set a new standard
for an Opening Ceremony and drew raves from
international media for being spectacular and
spellbinding, a show that no host city has since
matched in imagination and magnitude.
Almost 14 years later, the Chinese capital is
once again in the spotlight as the host of the
2022 Winter Olympics, which get underway
Wednesday, Feb. 2, two days before the official
Opening Ceremony on Friday, Feb. 4. NBC,
Peacock, USA Network, CNBC, NBCOlympics.
com and NBC Sports app will again team up to
provide 3,000-plus hours of coverage over 17 days
of a record 109 medal events in 15 sports, among
them figure skating, alpine skiing, snowboarding,
ice hockey, speed skating, freestyle skiing, biathlon
and luge.
International athletes expected to vie for
hardware at these Games include Mikael
Kingsbury (freestyle skiing, Canada), Hanyu
Yuzuru (figure skating, Japan), Mikaela Shiffrin
(alpine skiing, U.S.), Francesco Friedrich (bobsled,
Germany), Suzanne Schulting (short track
speed skating, Netherlands), Charlotte Kalla
(cross-country skiing, Sweden), Nathan Chen
(figure skating, U.S.), Eileen Gu (freestyle skiing,
China), Sara Takanashi (ski jumping, Japan), Tina
Hermann (skeleton, Germany) and Ester Ledecka
(snowboarding, alpine skiing, Czech Republic).
Of course, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic
will also play into the storylines as conditions
continue to change. For their part, the
International Olympic Committee and Olympic
organizers have made clear that these Games
will go on and the athletes will be subject to
strict protocols, including requiring vaccinations,
keeping them isolated inside the Olympic
“bubble” and not allowing them out among the
citizenry.
One interesting thing to watch is the
performance of athletes from the host country
at these Games. China is not known for winter
sports and in the lead up to these Olympics
have hired international coaches to coach its
athletes in hopes of inspiring more Chinese to try
skiing, snowboarding, figure skating and other
winter sports and thus make the country a more
significant presence on the international stage.
As for opening week sports to watch, curling
kicks things off on Wednesday, Feb. 2, with the
U.S. facing Australia. Women’s hockey then
faces off on Thursday, Feb. 3, with Team USA
opening its defense of its 2018 gold medal with a
preliminary contest against Finland.
Figure skating then gets going Friday, Feb.
4, with men’s short program, ice dance rhythm
dance and pairs short program prior to the
Opening Ceremony. And on Saturday, Feb. 5,
freestyle skiing makes its first appearance with
the final in men’s moguls, in which Canada’s
Kingsbury will attempt to defend his gold medal
from 2018 in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
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