Tag: Olympic Games (2022)

Skier Mikaela Shiffrin is Back on Top and Headed to the Olympics

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Thursday afternoon, roughly one month from the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, Mikaela Shiffrin was still a bit out of breath from a slalom training session in Austria. But it felt good, and not just because Shiffrin, an eight-time Olympic and world champion, is once again atop the Alpine World Cup overall standings. “I finally feel like myself again,” she said in a phone interview. Ten weeks ago, as she sat in the kitchen of her Colorado home, Shiffrin all but predicted her comeback after nearly two years mourning the accidental…

North Korea Says It Will Skip Beijing Olympics Because of the Pandemic

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SEOUL — North Korea said on Friday that it would not participate in the Beijing Winter Olympics because of the coronavirus pandemic and moves by “hostile forces.” Its no-show at the Beijing ​Games would deprive South Korea of a rare opportunity to establish official contact with the ​North. Officials from the South had hoped that the ​Olympics would provide a venue for​ official delegates from both Koreas to meet to discuss issues beyond sports. In a letter hand-delivered on Wednesday to China by the North’s ambassador, the country’s Olympic Committee…

China Keeps 13 Million in Xi’an Under Strict Lockdown

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China, racing to control one of its worst outbreaks in a single city since the beginning of the pandemic, has put in place a sweeping lockdown and mass testing drives, making clear that the country has no intention of abandoning its “zero Covid” policy. Even as a growing number of countries turn away from hard lockdowns, believing their economic and human costs to be too great, the Chinese government has continued to implement harsh restrictions. The city of Xi’an, in northwestern China, recorded 1,117 infections between Dec. 9 and Dec.…

As Olympics Near, China Tightens Rules and Athletes Invent Their Own

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The exemption, however, comes with a stringent requirement that foreigners not leave a “closed loop” of hotels and sports venues, linked by special buses and trains. “We must never go outside the closed loop, let alone reach the city level — this is our bottom line,” said Huang Chun, deputy director of the Olympic organizing committee’s Office of Epidemic Prevention and Control. For those outside China, getting to the Olympics in the first place remained the most urgent goal. Many are now taking proactive measures to keep the virus at…

China tells Winter Olympic spectators to clap, not cheer, for athletes, and Xi’an, a major city, locks down.

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ZHANGJIAKOU, China — Spectators at the Winter Olympics next February should clap but not shout in support of athletes. Waiters, cleaners and other support staff will not be allowed to leave Olympic venues to visit their families. And any Olympic participants leaving the vicinity for the rest of China will be required to spend at least one week in quarantine, followed by at least two weeks of isolation at home. As the Omicron variant spreads rapidly around the globe, China is taking elaborate precautions to prevent the coronavirus from reaching…

Chloe Kim and Shaun White Thrilled Fans at the Dew Tour

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The December Dew Tour stop is always a big one for the best snowboarders and freestyle skiers and for the fans who come to party and watch. In an Olympic season like this, it is even bigger — a key Olympic qualifying event for many athletes and a strong peek at what to expect come February. If this year’s event in Copper Mountain, Colo., was an indication, the competition in the halfpipe and the slopestyle course at the 2022 Beijing Winter Games is going to be tight, filled with bigger…

U.S. Olympic Leader: Peng Shuai’s Sexual Assault Charge Must Be Investigated

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With seven weeks to go before the start of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, leaders of the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee criticized China’s handling of the recent allegations of sexual assault from one of its star athletes. China’s treatment of the three-time Olympian Peng Shuai, one of China’s top tennis players, has become a contentious issue since Nov. 2, when Peng accused a former top government official of sexually assaulting her. Little has been heard from her since. “I think this is a sad situation,” Susanne Lyons, chair…

Putin and Xi Hold Video Summit

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MOSCOW — President Biden may have his alliance of democracies, but Russia and China still have each other. Xi Jinping addressed Vladimir V. Putin as his “old friend,” and the Russian president called his Chinese counterpart both his “dear friend” and his “honorable friend,” as the two leaders held a video summit on Wednesday — a display of solidarity in the face of Western pressure over Ukraine, Taiwan and many other matters. In footage of opening remarks released by the Kremlin, Mr. Putin said he would attend the opening ceremony…

Chloe Kim Is Grown Up and Ready for the Olympic Spotlight

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She repeated the words of the Instagram insult. She would not say who wrote them. “It’s definitely one of those things that I wish I didn’t see, but I’m also grateful,” Kim said. “If I didn’t see it, I would have been, like, ‘Oh, cool, we’re still all good.’ It’s helpful for me to know. It definitely made me put my guard up a little more, which I think is OK. You can’t trust anyone.” ‘Chloe time’ The front entry of Kim’s new house was a pileup of shoes, mostly…

Ahead of Biden’s Democracy Summit, China Says: We’re Also a Democracy

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BEIJING — As President Biden prepares to host a “summit for democracy” this week, China has counterattacked with an improbable claim: It’s a democracy, too. No matter that the Communist Party of China rules the country’s 1.4 billion people with no tolerance for opposition parties; that its leader, Xi Jinping, rose to power through an opaque political process without popular elections; that publicly calling for democracy in China is punished harshly, often with long prison sentences. “There is no fixed model of democracy; it manifests itself in many forms,” the…