Despite the rampage of the corona plague, and despite political tensions between China and many Western countries, the Olympic torch will be lit on February 4 at the Bird's Nest Stadium in the Chinese capital, and the 2022 Winter Games will officially open.
Beijing will be the first city in the world to host both the Winter Olympics and the Summer Olympics, although competitions in some of the disciplines that require a combination of snow and open spaces will be held outside the Chinese capital. Ice skating, skiing, bobsleigh, sledding, curling and biathlon.
However, the division into seven main branches is quite arbitrary and does not express the complexity and diversity of modern winter sports.
There is, for example, nothing in common with cross-country skiing and ski jumping, other than the fact that they both need snow (even the skis used by competitors in these two disciplines are completely different).
Similarly, there is no similarity between figure skating, a competition that examines the beauty and quality of execution of turns, jumps and other movements on the skating rink, and fast skating, a kind of "skate run", whose purpose is to cover the distance in as little time as possible.
Therefore, if the skiing and skating disciplines are broken down into different disciplines, it is more correct to talk about 15 disciplines, in which this time more than 4,000 athletes from about 90 countries will compete.
All industries promise a lot, Photo: IPI
Few people know that ice hockey and figure skating, which are considered to be the most popular of the Winter Olympics disciplines, first entered the Olympic program at summer games.
Figure skating was included in the 1908 Games in London, and ice hockey was included in the 1920 Games in Antwerp.
The reason for this strange fact is simple: 100 years ago there were no winter games yet.
The first Winter Olympics were held in Chamonix, France in 1924, and for comparison, only 16 competitions were held there.
For the avoidance of doubt, this was not a real Olympics, but a kind of appetizer for the summer Olympics held that year in France, but the first winter attempt was so successful that the Olympic movement decided to continue with it and retrospectively crown the Chamonix competitions as the first Winter Games.
Surprisingly, almost all the industries that will star in the 2022 Games have already appeared in Chamonix, only that in each industry there were a few competitions, and sometimes only one competition.
Over the years there has been a huge jump in the number of competitions.
Thus, in the category of alpine skiing, where the competitors ski down a mountain in a variety of winding trails with different technical complexity (Down Hill, slalom, giant slalom and Super G), this time there will be no less than 11 different competitions - five for men, five for women, and a combined competition One of the groups consisting of men and women.
Chinese stands, Norwegian dominance
During the years of Olympic history some disciplines were added to the Games, and several others actually came out.
Maybe it's good that way, otherwise we would be watching ski races today where the surfer is harnessed to horses, like in the 1928 games, or to dogs, like in the 1932 games.
Amulets of the Games in Beijing, Photo: AFP
A large jump in the number of competitions at the Olympic Winter Games in the late 20th and early 2000s was also due to the decision to add the freestyle and snowboard competitions, which are characterized by dynamism, are well-photographed for television and are intended to attract mainly young audiences.
The freestyle industry combines very different downhill skiing competitions, which are not included in alpine skiing and were once considered showcase competitions that are not suitable for competitive sports.
For example, slopestyle and half-tube competitions, which joined the Olympics only in 2014, are combinations of surfing with acrobatic exercises, and therefore require subjective scoring.
Like them, snowboarding competitions have been brought from the extreme worlds, and frankly, the conservative crowd of the Olympics is less attached to them.
Protests in the shadow of the Games for Tibet, Photo: IPI
Speaking of an audience, at this stage it is still unclear whether the epidemic waves will allow the 2022 Games to be held in the presence of spectators.
Given the complications of international aviation in the days of Corona, even if the approval is given, these will be mostly Chinese spectators.
Will China also control the podium, and not just the stands?
It seems not.
Traditionally the hegemony in winter sports belongs to Norway, the homeland of many of the Olympic disciplines.
In all, the Norwegians carry a small nation of five million people, 368 medals for the Winter Games (including 132 gold, 125 silver and 111 bronze medals), while the United States, ranked second, has only 305 medals.
The Norwegians were first in the Pyongyang Olympics 4 years ago, with small gaps from Germany and Canada.
For China, the Pyongyang Games were a failure (only one gold and 16th place in the medal rankings), and the hosts will do everything to improve the results this time.
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