BEIJING — All alongside, Chinese language officers insisted that the Olympics weren’t about politics, however somewhat sports activities. Ultimately, controversy and scandal haunted these, too.
For all of China’s efforts to hold on the Winter Video games with a festive spirit, Beijing 2022 unfolded as a joyless spectacle: constricted by a world well being catastrophe, fraught with geopolitical tensions, tainted as soon as once more by accusations of doping and overshadowed by the disaster in Ukraine.
Athletes marched into the Chook’s Nest stadium in Beijing on Sunday night time to the sound of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, closing essentially the most contentious Olympics in years with a show of conventional Chinese language knots, pink lanterns and a ultimate burst of fireworks that lighted up a chilly, clear night time.
Amid the pomp of the closing ceremony, China may have fun pulling off the Video games on schedule, regardless of every little thing. It’s a success, nevertheless, as measured by the low bar of avoiding whole catastrophe.
The Worldwide Olympic Committee, which spent years keeping off doubts about selecting an authoritarian nation as host, spent a lot of the previous two weeks dodging controversy in Beijing.
Along with troubling points raised by the Valieva episode, it confronted questions concerning the circumstances for athletes who remoted after testing optimistic for Covid; concerning the destiny of Peng Shuai, the tennis participant and former Olympian who accused a senior Chinese language official of sexual assault; concerning the inevitable injection of politics into an occasion meant to rise above them.
“What can one say, besides to heave a sigh,” mentioned Orville Schell, the director of the Middle on U.S.-China Relations on the Asia Society in New York. “Such an august event, designed to advertise openness, good sportsmanship and transnational solidarity, ended up being a closely policed, brittle, Potemkin-like simulacrum of the Olympic splendid.”
Closing Out the Video games
The I.O.C. has since revised the choice course of for host cities, partially to keep away from the possibility of as soon as once more making a Faustian discount just like the one seven years in the past, when Beijing edged out Almaty, the previous capital of one other authoritarian nation, Kazakhstan.
Throughout Sunday’s ceremony, Mayor Chen Jining of Beijing handed the Olympic flag to the mayors of two Italian cities, Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, which can host the Winter Olympics in 2026.
The following Summer time Video games shall be in Paris in 2024, in Los Angeles in 2028 and in Brisbane, Australia, in 2032 — locations the place it’s hoped that questions of human rights is not going to dominate the preparations.
China grew to become the primary nation to arrange winter and summer time editions in the identical metropolis, an accomplishment held up as a triumph of Communist Celebration may. The nation’s chief, Xi Jinping, attended the closing, as he did the opening 16 days in the past, greeted by a roar equaled solely when the big Chinese language group entered.
The 2008 Summer time Olympics, which befell in most of the similar venues within the Chinese language capital, felt then like an enchantment for respect after a long time of poverty and political chaos.
To China’s critics, these Video games felt as a substitute like a requirement for it.
Chinese language officers accused the USA and different nations of politicizing the Olympics, denouncing President Biden’s diplomatic boycott as “a farce.” And but China additionally injected its personal political parts.
Mr. Xi met the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, solely hours earlier than the opening ceremony, a present of assist within the face of Western threats to punish Moscow if its forces invade Ukraine.
China additionally selected as an Olympic torch bearer a soldier wounded in a lethal border conflict with India in 2020. The Olympic flame was lit by a cross-country skier from Xinjiang, the province experiencing a mass detention and re-education marketing campaign that the USA has known as genocidal.
One official with the Beijing Organizing Committee warned individuals to not violate the Olympic Constitution’s rule towards making political statements. One other official violated it by restating China’s claims on Taiwan, the self-governing island democracy, and denouncing criticism of its insurance policies in Xinjiang as lies.
These feedback prompted Thomas Bach, president of the Worldwide Olympic Committee, to subject a public rebuke of the hosts, although it was gentle. The committee’s total deference prompted searing criticism from China’s critics, who mentioned that the Video games had been allowed to “sportswash” grave violations of primary rights.
By means of all of it, the sports activities did shine by way of.
Norway, a nation of simply 5 million folks, repeated its extraordinary success within the Winter Olympics, topping the medals desk with 16 golds, a document, and 37 medals total. Eileen Gu, an 18-year-old skier from San Francisco who competed for China, grew to become the occasion’s breakout star.
Some athletes, targeted on their sports activities above all, praised China’s preparations. Nick Baumgartner, the veteran American snowboarder who, with Lindsey Jacobellis, gained a gold medal in snowboard cross, described the mountain venues northwest of Beijing as “wonderful.”
“I’ll say, out of the 4 Olympics I’ve been to, the manicuring and simply how exact and exquisite every little thing is, is above and past,” he mentioned after his profitable race in Zhangjiakou.
The occasions unfolded inside what organizers known as a “closed loop” system that turned resorts and venues into islands in an Olympic archipelago, separated from peculiar Chinese language by non permanent fences and checkpoints. Everybody inside acquired a day by day check for Covid.
As a device of China’s “zero Covid” coverage, it labored. Just a few athletes needed to miss their competitions, and by the top, there have been days when not a single check got here again optimistic. Many athletes accepted the measures. Some noticed the upside in them.
“To be sincere, you get a mouth swab day-after-day and also you get your personal bed room,” Meryeta O’Dine, a Canadian snowboarder and bronze medal winner, mentioned, referring to the choice to not assign roommates to reduce shut contacts. “It’s truly been fairly candy.”
After the ultimate parade into the closing ceremony, the nationwide groups lingered on the stadium’s illuminated flooring, meant to resemble a sheet of ice, as if wanting to make the second final a bit longer.
Outdoors the closed loop, the temper round Beijing was subdued. No overseas spectators had been allowed, and solely specifically invited and screened Chinese language guests may attend.
“It’s a Winter Olympics that makes China’s management completely satisfied,” Wu Qiang, an unbiased political analyst in Beijing, mentioned. “It has nothing to do with the widespread folks.”
The half-empty arenas hardly ever pulsed with pleasure, although followers perked up for the Chinese language athletes. The Chinese language group had its greatest haul of medals in a Winter Olympics, profitable 9 gold medals and 15 total.
It was, maybe, a results of Mr. Xi’s pledge to create a nation of greater than 300 million winter sports activities fanatics in a rustic with little custom of them.
Mr. Bach, the I.O.C. president, praised that accomplishment on Sunday. “The optimistic legacy of those Olympic Video games,” he mentioned, “is ensured.”
Outdoors China, the Video games are more likely to have little impact on the world’s notion. “Getting some optimistic protection, or not less than less-negative protection, doesn’t essentially translate into transformation of public perceptions about China,” mentioned Maria Repnikova, an professional at Georgia State College on China’s “smooth energy.”
Nils van der Poel, a Swedish speedskater who gained two gold medals, mentioned that it was “horrible” to award the Olympics to China, and referenced Nazi Germany’s internet hosting the Video games in 1936. “I believe this can be very irresponsible to offer it to a rustic that violates human rights as blatantly because the Chinese language regime is doing,” he informed a newspaper.
In 2008, China’s holding the Olympics truly led to extra damaging views of the nation, in keeping with international opinion surveys, as worldwide consideration threw mild on the character of the political system.
Again then, many puzzled whether or not being an Olympic host would induce optimistic change within the nation. This time round, few folks have entertained such hopes.
Claire Fu contributed analysis. Keith Bradsher contributed reporting.