Beijing 2022 - Your verdict

[Olympian2004]

Even if I at first felt as if I wouldn't create this topic this time around, it is still an Olympic tradition, even if the Olympic ideals are going more and more down the dumper. So here they are, our verdicts on the Beijing 2022 Winter Games. I will subsequently post my verdict.

[krow]

it fucking sucked

[baron-pierreIV]

Without the Valieva drama, it would've been nothing.  Of course, now, USA pairs Kneirem-Frazier are being sued by some dicks in using their HOUSE OF THE RISING SUN version.  That is possibly a first -- to go after figure skaters for using your music without proper clearance.  It's NOT like they are going to make a financial killing in one night!  

So, now the Olympics have fulfilled all their obligations to the Far East - the top 3 countries have all hosted at least one Summer and one WOGs.  

B for Bleh.  

[StefanMUC]

I am sure my fellow German Fencing 1976 will agree (secretly) when I say THANK F*** IT’S OVER!

The clean athletes did their best but everything around them was a nightmare start to finish, thanks to Xi, Thomas, Vlad, the CAS and of course that nasty virus.

[krow]

1 minute ago, StefanMUC said:

I am sure my fellow German Fencing 1976 will agree (secretly) when I say THANK F*** IT’S OVER!

The clean athletes did their best but everything around them was a nightmare start to finish, thanks to Xi, Thomas, Vlad, the CAS and of course that nasty virus.

yes, exactly, you and i agree on everything except perhaps on alex hall's hotness. 

[Sir Rols]

Thanks @Olympian2004

It’s not like I’m going to watch the cc, so might as well put in my 2 cents worth now.

These games pretty well defied all my expectations. I woke up the day after the OC, expecting to read about 2008 mark 2, and instead it seemed to be a damp squib. And that pretty well goes for the games as a whole as well. I expected slick, well-oiled, stunningly presented games - a Sochi 2.0 - and instead the two words I’d use to describe them were not the ones I’d have thought of - underwhelming and unappealing.

I thought the venues were boring - that pale blue was uninspiring at best, the big air - whatever the intentions - was a nightmare. The best that can be said was that the week 2 blizzards at least covered up the brown wastelands around the alpine venues.

Sports-wise, for all I’ve enjoyed past WOGs, these just didn’t grab me. By week 2 I’d given up watching avidly and started binge watching Schitt’s Creek. Even the figure skating, which I look forward to share-watching with my partner, was marked by the Valieva effect. Then again, she was the most interesting going on.

Australia had it’s best ever medal hall, I suppose. But the Kiwis finished atop us on Golds. The only saving grace was that at least Britain is with us behind them. The one bright spark for me was seeing my second team, Sweden, finally have a great games. Pity they weren’t prepping for Stockholm 2026.

Politics? Enough said. The best thing that can be said that is that war didn’t end up breaking out in the middle of the games.

GamesBids. Good to see a faint glimmer of the old vibe back temporarily and see a few familiar posters reappear. But it’s also been a tad, shall we say, grumpy around the place. I guess this place goes into deep freeze now. Hopefully it thaws in 2024.

I’d barely give these games a C grade.  

[krow]

4 minutes ago, Sir Rols said:

the big air - whatever the intentions - was a nightmare. The best that can be said was that

alex hall was G-O-R-G-E-O-U-S

omg i know right??

if i were alex hall i would kiss and hug my gold medal every night before going to sleep, and tell it i loved it more than any living person on earth, and mean it. "it's just me and you," i would say. "it's just me and you against the world," and i would know that i was the best in the whole world for a brief moment in time, or at least that the wind was slightly less shitty for one special minute in beijing — every time i jerked off i would use the medal's ribbon to cut the circulation around my d— 

i once asked my former colleague what she did with her torino bronze and she said she kept it in a box in her living room along with some other sporting memorabilia. i was shocked. i don't have a bronze from torino, because i was too busy complaining about the games on this forum, but if i did i would wear it under all my clothes like an amulet. 

[SkiFreak]

Preliminary verdict before the closing ceremony in a few hours: sterile! Lifeless! I don't want to hear anything anymore about covid in Paris in two years so take your vaccines! Broadcasting was missing the cultural vignettes. The stands were missing the international fans and spectators. No team houses. Probably no sponsor pavilions, etc, etc. Just a bad time all around the world, including here domestically in Canada with the stupid freedom rally blockades and protests.

On the sports side of things, good performances. Although Team Canada fell short in the gold and it was our lowest tally since 1994 in Lillehammer. Final performances from some favourite Olympians like Shaun White and Charles Hamelin (however I do wish these guys went out with full venues cheering them on). No podium for us in men's hockey, but glad Finland took the gold. Some firsts for Canada like 4-man bobsled bronze and ski jumping bronze.

Glad the Olympics are leaving Asia for a bit. Here's hoping for more winter scenes in Italy in four years.

 

[Scotguy II]

Games have been ok.

Ceremonies were a let down.

The sports were just normal really - a lot of the downside was the lacklustre performance by many of the athletes

Having only been a short time after Tokyo has given us a bit of fatigue plus the pandemic.

Despite your views on China politically, they have put on a safe and well run games

Rating: B 

I was able to call out a few members here for shocking behaviour and also spice up the boards at bit. "Go out with a bang, eh SG'  

I might pop on again to see the great mass playing plastic bottles and rubbish of the Birmingham OC, but i shall leave you in the words of member Lee:

"I no longer care for most of the people on this website and therefore do not want to get drawn into a long, childish argument. However, I do think what I have said needed saying, although I fully suspect it will fall on deaf ears." Lee

[FYI]

[SkiFreak]

19 minutes ago, Sir Rols said:

I guess this place goes into deep freeze now. Hopefully it thaws in 2024.

Don't forget it's a winter games year, which means... World Cup! The World cup section will be getting traffic now.

[FYI]

34 minutes ago, krow said:

everything except perhaps on alex hall's hotness. 

Apparently he’s one of those acquired tastes. Like Shaun White - he was downright terrifying in his younger days, with that mop hair of his. But as he got older, he got to be okay. He looked his best in PyeongChang.

[StefanMUC]

2 minutes ago, SkiFreak said:

Don't forget it's a winter games year, which means... World Cup! The World cup section will be getting traffic now.

Great. Another event with more than dubious hosts trying sportswashing.

[Scotguy II]

2 minutes ago, FYI said:

Apparently he’s one of those acquired tastes. Like Shaun White - he was downright terrifying in his younger days, with that mop hair of his. But as he got older, he got to be okay. He looked his best in PyeongChang.

 

6 minutes ago, FYI said:

[Sir Rols]

6 minutes ago, SkiFreak said:

Don't forget it's a winter games year, which means... World Cup! The World cup section will be getting traffic now.

The World Cup’s always played second fiddle here. Doubt we’d even have enough interested members for a sweep this year. Sh!t time zone for Oz anyway. 

Birmingham? It’ll be interesting to see if many notice. I think the Commies are on their last legs.

One good thing to have come out of Beijing - we’ve seen totalitarian states can do crap games as well.

[FYI]

13 minutes ago, Scotguy II said:

I was able to call out a few members here for shocking behaviour and also spice up the boards at bit. "Go out with a bang, eh SG'  

I might pop on again to see the great mass playing plastic bottles and rubbish of the Birmingham OC, but i shall leave you in the words of member Lee:

"I no longer care for most of the people on this website and therefore do not want to get drawn into a long, childish argument. However, I do think what I have said needed saying, although I fully suspect it will fall on deaf ears." Lee

[Scotguy II]

5 minutes ago, FYI said:

[Olympian2004]

The politics

This is a new, but inevitable category for these Games. Thomas Bach wouldn't like this, since he still claims that the IOC is politically neutral while he is intensively brown-nosing Xi Jinping and playing the "Three Wise Monkeys" game about the crimes that China commits against human rights and human dignity. Even during these Games, the CCP didn't even try to sugar-coat its ruthlessness, eagerly supported by the collection of scumbags that is the IOC of the year 2022. Uyghur citizens were forced to robotically "celebrate" the opening ceremony and "their" final torch bearer in front of television cameras, Taiwan was bullied into taking part in the opening ceremony, German reporters were not allowed to interview the hand-picked spectators at the biathlon events, and as a final "thank you" German broadcaster ZDF got reprimanded by the regime for its rightfully critical reporting during these Games. And then, there was of course the decision to make an Uyghur athlete one of the final torch bearers. What a travesty, what a grotesque and ugly smirk by the Chinese regime and its little helpers in the IOC.

And this is only the tip of the iceberg. We will probably never know how many courageous Chinese citizens were silenced or even physically harmed while we watched the sporting events of Beijing 2022 unfold. And let's not forget Thomas Bach's old friend Vladimir Putin who is preparing to invade a sovereign country like Ukraine yet again shortly after the Olympic Flame went out. Bach will probably even thank Putin for not raining on his "Oh, we are all so happy and peaceful here at the Olympics" parade and for waiting with his despicable move until after tonight's closing ceremony. What a miserable state our world is in if we allow this kind of sad farce to happen.

But it will happen again. China is too big a factor in world economy and politics to ignore them for future major sports events. And there are further dictatorships and authoritarian regimes waiting in the wings (or should I say, stacked up in Bach's harem?) for their moment to "shine". The Qatar 2022 World Cup is just around the corner, and while we are (thankfully) heading into a period of Olympic Games in democratic countries, I strongly expect us political clusterf*cks like these Games to happen many times more during our lifetimes. But hey, we are all so happy and peaceful...

 

The organisation and atmosphere

Just as in Tokyo, this is a mixed-bag category. The technical state of the venues was very good apparently, I haven't heard anything bad about them. The pitfall, though, were the weather conditions with the cold, the wind and - surprisingly - the heavy snowfall in Zhangjiakou and Yanqing. The sustainability record of these Games is abysmal, but still here's hoping that one or two venues will at least still see world cup events in the future so that the use of all those tons of cash and artificial snow were not entirely in vain.

Atmosphere-wise. there was of course not much to win for Beijing either in times of the continued pandemic. I must say that even while there were some spectators present at some of the events, it made no difference for me since they were not allowed to cheer. But that fit into the CCP's "Please no spontaneity, we have everything planned and we are watching you" concept very well. See above what I wrote about the organiser's veto against interviewing spectators and thus creating just the tiniest bit of Olympic atmosphere of good cheer and a "human feelgood factor". Once again, I feel sorry for the people of the host nation that they were largely forced to watch the events at home, especially after they have to pay the bills for these Games and also have to pay a high price on the human rights' front.

 

The sports

This is the category that still keeps the Olympic Flame burning inside of me, even if it has gotten significantly smaller in recent years. I said at the start of the Games that these would be the athletes' Games for me, and the athletes sure did make great use this stage. As usual, we saw athletes showing the performances of their lifetimes, sometimes surprising themselves (like the completely unexpected German gold medallists in the women's sprint team event in cross country skiing), showing perseverance despite all odds, even coming back after a COVID quarantine at the Games, but also suffering major disappointments (Mikaela Shiffrin will probably want to forget these Games as quickly as possible). Norway, Germany and Sweden showed great performances in this which could have been their home Games in Oslo, Munich or Stockholm. China's strong performance proved that their is a "home factor" even if there are hardly any home spectators present. We saw great careers end, just like those of Claudia Pechstein (unless she even wants to go to Milan, almost aged 54 by then) and Shaun White.

But we also saw the ugly. Kamila Valieva should have been saved from being put in the world's spotlight at these Games, and even if the doping allegations against her should prove unfounded, it tarnishes how athletes are exploited by their respective coaches and nations as a showpiece of prestige. And while these Games have not set a new record in medalling countries at Winter Games, they showed again how diverse and competitive also winter sports have become in recent years among the nations. Australia's and New Zealand's winter athletes, for example, seem to have come to stay and also win medals. And traditional powerhouses like Norway and Germany can't be too relaxed and complacent about their recent successes, when so many nations are lurking for the top spots in the medal table. I am looking forward to see how this will all turn out in four years' time in Milan and Cortina.

 

The overall verdict

I must say, that from a pure sports perspective, I enjoyed these Games just like any edition before them. Maybe I even enjoyed them a tiny bit more because due to working at home in the pandemic, I was once again to witness as many live events as never before, and also because they offered so many pleasant distractions from the "same old, same old" in a pandemic winter with record spikes of COVID infections and lots of grey skies, rain and even storm here in Germany.

But the political background and the lack of atmosphere prevented me to really dive into these Games. @Sir Rolsput it very well in his mid-Games verdict: "Just not feeling them." That was exactly my feeling throughout these 17 days. It was impossible for me to ignore that we were presented with a Potemkin village while being laughed into our faces by morally and probably also financially corrupt honchos in the Chinese regime and the IOC. This is why I won't rank Beijing 2022 among other editions of the Olympic Winter Games. They stand for themselves in terms of turning the Olympic ideal into a travesty. And while I will always stand by the Chinese people and their bravery, these Games were not their Games, they were propaganda Games for their regime. And I am very glad that at the very least here in Germany, the media didn't buy that cr*p and thus rained on the CCP's parade, despite being bullied and reprimanded. Just like the athletes kept alive a bit of the former glory of the Olympic Games, it is important to keep a critical stance towards all who want to sell us lies as truth and who want to sell us Olympic Games as "a celebration of humanity" while ignoring human rights and the basic rules of human decency.

So: Thank you, athletes, thank you, media, and thank you to all Chinese people who had to put up with all this circus. But no thanks to the CCP and the IOC.

[baron-pierreIV]

Apparently, even TV viewership in China for the 2nd week crashed well below their state-run network's projections.  I guess they're all just waiting for spring???

[krow]

6 minutes ago, FYI said:

Apparently he’s one of those acquired tastes. Like Shaun White - he was downright terrifying in his younger days, with that mop hair of his. But as he got older, he got to be okay. He looked his best in PyeongChang.

shaun has passed peak hotness i'll give you that, but he's still extremely sexy. 

he's a year younger than me, as i mentioned, but then again i look young for my age because i don't spend all day getting my cheeks whipped by icy winds while i try and land a double mctwist 1260. 

also i'm a perfect little sweetie with amazing genes. 

[Sir Rols]

13 minutes ago, baron-pierreIV said:

Apparently, even TV viewership in China for the 2nd week crashed well below their state-run network's projections.  I guess they're all just waiting for spring???

What about all the extra Panda mascots they ordered but now have to offload?

[SkiFreak]

Some things I'd like to see for future games:

1) unfortunately not doable while covid is still going on, but I'd like to see all athletes remain for the duration of the games. The ones that finish in the first week usually jump on a plane and head home. Would be nice for them to stick around to the closing ceremony and cheer on the rest of their team mates and represent their country.

2) there's more and more night-time events. Would be nice to be back during the day like ski jumping.

3) don't have any events until after the opening ceremony. Two weeks ago I was channel surfing and surprised there were two days worth of events before the OC. So it is 18 days of glory now?

[Sir Rols]

1 minute ago, SkiFreak said:

1) unfortunately not doable while covid is still going on, but I'd like to see all athletes remain for the duration of the games. The ones that finish in the first week usually jump on a plane and head home. Would be nice for them to stick around to the closing ceremony and cheer on the rest of their team mates and represent their country.

Isn’t that just the covid era? I though usually the week one athletes mostly stayed in the village to use up the condom allocations and piss off the athletes still waiting to compete in week 2 by partying hard.

[SkiFreak]

The IOC will take a sigh of relief now. I wouldn't be surprised if, following 2028, 2030 and 2034 are going to be North American games, in order to replenish the bank accounts post-covid with that prime time coverage and sponsorships.

[Olympian2004]

11 minutes ago, SkiFreak said:

2) there's more and more night-time events. Would be nice to be back during the day like ski jumping.

3) don't have any events until after the opening ceremony. Two weeks ago I was channel surfing and surprised there were two days worth of events before the OC. So it is 18 days of glory now?

2) I beg to differ here, I think that the night time and the floodlights create a special atmosphere especially during the cross-country and biathlon events, when the athletes are skiing through a dark, snowy forest. And I think it didn't hurt the ski jumping either that it took place during night time. At least that offered us Europeans the chance to witness many events live.

3) I guess that shoving all sports events into the 16 days is unfeasible due to schedule constraints. I don't mind getting a first taste of the Olympic atmosphere (if there is any, unlike now in Tokyo and Beijing) already before the opening ceremony. What I would prefer, though, is an extension of the Games to three weeks. I still don't get why the FIFA World Cup is spread across four weeks while the Olympic Games with their considerably higher number of events are boiled down to two weeks.