BEIJING — The
Beijing Winter Olympics have
closed with IOC chief Thomas Bach hailing a smoothly run event and “safe games”
in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the gold medals were overshadowed by
a doping controversy.
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The games ended on Sunday in the “Bird’s Nest”
stadium, just as they had when the Chinese capital hosted the
2008 Summer Olympics, in a snowflake-themed closing ceremony attended by President Xi
Jinping and a socially-distanced crowd.
As he declared the Games over and handed over to
2026 hosts Milano-Cortina, the
International Olympic Committee president Bach
hailed an “unforgettable Olympic experience”.
The Games produced bright new stars including
China’s Californian-born freestyle skier
Eileen Gu, who won two gold medals to
cement her huge popularity in the host nation.
The future of 15-year-old Russian figure skating
prodigy
Kamila Valieva is less certain after she failed a drugs test but was
allowed to continue competing.
Then, after a week of intense pressure, she fell
apart in an error-strewn performance that will go down as one of the saddest in
Olympic history.
Chinese organizers will be quick to hail the success
of the vast COVID-secure “bubble” that enveloped the Games, with up to 70,000
people sealed off.
There was no mass
outbreak of COVID-19 at the Games
or in the wider Chinese capital, but Bach said: “If we want to finally overcome
this pandemic, we must be faster, we must aim higher, we must be stronger — we
must stand together.”
“In this Olympic spirit of solidarity, we call on
the international community: give equal access to vaccines for everybody around
the world.”
With tensions rising between
Russia and Ukraine,
Bach said the athletes had “given peace a chance”.
“May the political leaders around the world be
inspired by your example of solidarity and peace,” he said.
China and its ruling Communist Party will look back
on a soft-power success.
The Global Times, a Chinese nationalist state-run
tabloid, said on Monday the
Olympics had shown the ‘true nature’ of China.
“The unexpected
global popularity of the Beijing Winter
Olympic Games declared the complete
failure of the so-called diplomatic boycott, smashed the malicious slander of
some Western media, and demonstrated the enduring charm of human resilience and
unity,” it said.
Echoing that theme, fireworks lit up the night sky
at the ceremony, spelling out “ONE WORLD”.
Valieva’s case dominated
Gu, the 18-year-old who was
born in California but switched to
China in 2019, gave the hosts a significant
medal bump, helping them finish third in the medals table with nine golds.
That was easily China’s best performance at a
Winter Games, a place ahead of chief geopolitical rival the US, who claimed eight
golds.
For the second Games in a row, Norway topped the
medals table, with 16 golds, mainly thanks to their peerless cross-country
skiers. Germany were second on 12.
A new men’s figure skating champion emerged in
22-year-old Nathan Chen of the US, who dethroned two-time Olympic champion
Yuzuru Hanyu, in what could be the Japanese legend’s final Games appearance.
Shaun White, the American who has defined
snowboarding, bowed out after finishing without a medal. The 35-year-old
three-time Olympic champion called the sport “the love of my life”.
There was bitter disappointment for his fellow
American and one of the biggest names of the Games, the alpine skier
Mikaela Shiffrin, who also went home empty-handed.
But it was Valieva’s story that dominated the Games,
catapulting the teenage skater to the forefront of yet another Russian doping
controversy to mar an Olympics.
After becoming the first woman in history to land a
quadruple jump in Olympic competition to help
Russia win the team event, it was
revealed Valieva had tested positive for trimetazidine, a drug used to treat
angina but which is banned for athletes because it can boost endurance.
To fury from the US team and others, the Court of
Arbitration for Sport allowed her to continue competing at the Games, citing
her young age, though without clearing her of doping.
In the final, Valieva fell several times, to audible
gasps from the crowd, and was given a cold reception from her coach
Eteri Tutberidze as she left the rink.
Bach called that reaction “chilling” and ordered the
young skater’s coaches and advisors be investigated.
Valieva’s doping case looks certain to drag on for
months.
For the first time in Olympic history, the IOC ruled
that the skating team medals cannot be awarded until her case is settled.
Ice skating’s governing body meanwhile said it would
consider a proposal to raise the minimum competition age to 17.
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