Beijing 2022 First Week Recap

I feel like everyone has that one topic, that when mentioned, they get fired up with and won't stop talking about it for the rest of the day. For some, it is Marvel, maybe Grey's Anatomy, or maybe even Harry Styles and Taylor Swift. For me?

For me, it is the Olympics...

It is I, yo girl emilia, and I am back with another Olympics recap post. I decided on a whim to do a recap for the first week of the Tokyo 2020 games and had a blast with it. I know I didn't do a second recap for those Olympics as I originally planned/promised, but I had COVID towards the end of the games and wasn't in the right headspace to write at that time. 😎👍 Anyways, currently happy and healthy now so I am here to write about the Beijing 2022 Olympic Games! We have lots to cover with sports, fashion, and politics.

A Politically Tense Games

A large group of countries, mostly western countries, are partaking in a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing 2022 games. These countries include the US, Lithuania, the UK, Australia, Canada, Japan, Belgium, Denmark, Taiwan, Estonia, Kosovo, and India. This is due to the current conditions that the Chinese government has put the Uyghur people under. The Uyghur people, an ethnic group in the northwestern part of China, are practicing Muslims and have been placed in internment camps in Xinjiang by the Chinese government. Within the past 10 years, there has been a cultural genocide on the Uyghur people. The White House stated its reasons for the US's diplomatic boycott as, "given the PRC’s ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other human rights abuses" that there would be no US diplomats sent. (PRC means the People's Republic of China) If you would like to read more about the Uyghur people and what is happening to them, here is a link to a Smithsonian article talking about it. 

I think one of the most absurd things from the Opening Ceremony was that China had an Uyghur athlete help run in the last torch into the "cauldron" for these games (more on the cauldron and ceremony later) as if everything is perfect and happy. 

Another politically tense aspect is Russia, on several levels as the games started. Currently, there are tensions between Ukraine and Russia due to disagreements on NATO and Russia has brought its troops to the border that they share with Ukraine. Several countries have told their citizens within Ukraine to evacuate, and there are worries that Russia could invade before the Olympics even end. If you have been watching the Olympics, you may have noticed that Russia is announced and represented as the ROC. This is due to a punishment given by the World Anti-Doping Agency and the IOC after a whistleblower from Russia revealed the doping that takes place behind the scenes. Russia is not allowed to compete under the Russian flag, their anthem is not played at medal ceremonies, and they are known as the Russian Olympic Committee. This went into effect in December 2020 and was to continue for the next 4 years, but they appealed and got it shortened to 2 years. (Some of you may remember this happening during the Tokyo 2020 games in 2021). More Info on it Here!

Unfortunately, one of Russia's youngest and brightest athletes has been brought to the hot seat when it comes to doping. Kamilia Valieva (15), made history during the figure skating team performance by being the first woman in Olympic history to land a quad jump, helping the ROC win a gold medal for the team event. Then, it was reported that Kamila tested positive for an illegal drug before the European championships last month. This is causing a messy situation where Russia, Japan, and the US still have not gotten their medals from the figure skating team event because of the legal issues on whether or not Russia can receive their gold medal. (I would like to say that Kamila's coach has a history of working young girls extremely hard and burning them out young. The drug that Kamila tested positive for was a heart support drug for fatigue. She is a minor and this is not her fault.) Her hearing on whether or not she can compete for the individual women's competition is on Sunday and the women's competition starts Tuesday. Article on it here

After sorting all of that out, let's get to the sports. Before that though, I would like to clear the air on my stance on the Olympics. I have always had a love story with the Olympics because of my family's background with it, and being a swimmer for so long. I really enjoy the Winter Olympics because it is filled with sports that I have never/hardly tried and sports I don't see (#warmweather), so seeing these athletes perform, there's a certain level of incredible magic to me. That being said, I get excited talking about Beijing 2022 because of the ATHLETES, not praising China on how well they are hosting or as a country. Later in this blog post, I will talk about my disappointment with some aspects of the Opening Ceremony. For now, the sports. 

Week 1 Sports Recap

This first week of the games has been action-packed and exciting! I guess one of my favorite parts of the Winter Olympics is that the US is not as dominant in the games (LMAO), so we get to hear and learn different stories about athletes all around the world. The games started about 2 days before the opening ceremony and the first medals were handed out just a day after the ceremony. This sports recap will be through February 11th, 2022. 

Skiing Events

The first gold medal of the games was won by Therese Johang of Norway in the 7.5 km cross country skiing event. Just as mixed events were introduced in the Tokyo 2020 summer games, there are also mixed events in Beijing. Norway won gold in the Mixed Relay for the Biathlon 4x6km, followed by France and ROC. Biathlon is one of the craziest sports I like to watch. You're telling me that these people are skiing in below-freezing conditions on tiny skis up and downhill, and then they have to shoot a target with a gun they carry on their back? In the wind?! Crazy. Moguls Skiing started at the beginning of the games and Walter Wallberg from Sweden beat the defending gold medalist, Mikael Kingsbury from Canada, followed by Ikuma Horishma from Japan for bronze. For the women's moguls, Jakara Anthony won gold for Australia, Jaelin Kauf won the US's 2nd silver and 2nd medal overall, and Anastasiia Smirnova for the ROC got bronze. 

For ski jumping on the normal hill, Slovenia took gold and bronze for the women's competition with a German squeezed in between for silver. It was sweet to see the Slovenian girl's reactions. The men's competition had Ryoyu Kobayashi of Japan winning gold, Manuel Fettner of Austria with silver, and Dawid Kubacki from Poland with bronze! In men's giant hill, the 2-time defending gold medalist, Kamil Stoch of Poland, got 4th :( Marius Lindvik of Norway won gold, Ryoyu Kobayashi of Japan won silver, Karl Geiger of Germany won bronze. 

Gratulacje Dawid!

Mikaela Shiffrin has several gold medals to her name from the Olympics and many World Championship competitions, yet she had a rough start to the games where she skidded out and got disqualified from finishing her races. There is so much pressure placed by the media when these defending gold medalists perform, you can't help but wonder if they somehow jinx it :/ Nonetheless, I feel bad for her and I understand her as a human and athlete that we all have bad races and days sometimes, people need to stop giving her such a hard time for it. 

Also in skiing, you have the freestyle skiing big air competition, where competitors go down a huge hill and launch into the air with huge spins and tough landings. There was one lady who landed on one ski because the other fell off! With the men's competition, Birk Rudd (Norway) won gold, Colby Stevenson (US) won silver, Henrik Harlaut (Sweden) won bronze. For the women's competition, Eileen Gu, 18 years old, a fashion model for Louis Vuitton, American born and going to Stanford, competed for China and won Gold. Tess Ledeux of France won silver, and Mathilde Gremaud of Switzerland won bronze. 

Snowboarding Event

The US's first medal at the Winter Olympics was a silver medal in Women's slopestyle by Julia Marino! Gold was won by Zoi Synnott Sadowski from New Zealand, winning their first-ever gold medal from the Winter Olympics. Bronze was awarded to Tess Coady from Australia. This event was quite entertaining because Jamie Anderson of the US has won the gold medal at the 2014 and 2018 Olympics, yet she finished 9th here. Plus, there was a huge group hug between everyone at the end that was super sweet. For men's slopestyle, Red Gerard (US) was the defending gold medalist and was brought with some intense competition. All sorts of crazy tricks were presented and in the end, Max Parrot (pronounced Pair-oh) of Canada won the Gold, Yiming Su of China won silver, and Mark McMorris of Canada won bronze. I was sad to see Red Gerard get 4th place, but hearing the stories of medalists was really sweet. Max Parrot was diagnosed with cancer in 2018 and had to undergo chemotherapy, and now in 2022, he is an Olympic gold medalist! Incredible.

ALSO THAT LULULEMON JACKET!!

With the women's snowboarding cross, which is several people racing down a mountain together, Lindsey Jacobellis won the US's first Gold medal of the games! Her story is crazy in the sense that this is her 5th Olympic game's and she finally gets to add a gold medal to her collection, which has a silver medal from 2006 Torino. With this first gold, something shifted in the results for the Americans overnight, a golden wave if you will. Lindsey ended up winning another gold a couple of days later  I will mention Nathan Chen's gold below, and one of the other amazing golds was Chloe Kim with the women's halfpipe. With her first run dominating the rest of the competition, Chloe tried to be the first woman ever to land a 1280 spin at the Olympics with her remaining two runs but she was unable to do so. Still! She managed to defend her gold medal from 2018 by adding one more to her collection.

Shaun White, 5 time Olympian and defending gold medalist (2018, 2010, 2006) in the men's halfpipe announced that his competition would be the last time he would be competing. He had everyone on the edge of their seats with qualifying to the finals on his last run, yet he got 4th in the finals, just like during Sochi 2014. It was an emotional ending. He cried and thanked his family, friends, coaches, and friends for all of the support these past decades in his interview. Finally, he thanked the sport of snowboarding and congratulated the medalists- highlighting the future that the sport has. I cried while watching him finish his last run and reflect on his career, it reminded me of when I said goodbye to swimming last year. Everyone was giving him hugs and thanking him for everything he has done for the sport, but in the end, Ayumu Hirano (Japan) won gold after winning silver these past 2 Olympics, Scotty James (Australia) won silver, and Jan Scherrer (Switzerland) won bronze.  

Events on Ice

Figure skating started off with the Team event, where each country had a different person/group for each event on the roster. In 2018, the US got Bronze, but they managed to get silver in Beijing with stunning performances including some by Nathan Chen, Madison Chock & Evan Bates with a solid Daft Punk routine, and Karen Chen. As mentioned above, the ROC won gold with Kamila Valieva, who landed the quad jump and triple axles in her routines, very rare tricks in the woman's competitions and she was the first woman to land a quad in the Olympics. Japan won bronze with some very strong performances from the men, which will segway me into the men's figure skating competition. The defending 2-time gold medalist, Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan, was nowhere to be seen during the team competition, yet arrived just in time for the individual men's competition. He had suffered from injuries in the past after his gold in 2018, but he still attempted to be the first person to land a quad axel in competition, but he was unable to. His short program placed him in 8th and then after the free skate, he placed in 4th. Nathan Chen of the US had a rough time in 2018, he won the bronze medal with the team event and was the gold medal contender, yet he placed 5th after the pressure of the games. 2022 was a redemption story, he broke the world record for the highest score for men's short program, and he won the gold medal with a free program composed of different Elton John songs and wearing a Vera Wang outfit that sparked many memes on Twitter. Silver and Bronze were awarded to Yuma Kagiyama and Shoma Uno of Japan, both had emotional and advanced performances that made me cheer for them too. 

Say what you want on this outfit, I kinda like it!

Curling has been taking place throughout the games, and the first set of medals for the Mixed Doubles event was given to Italy, Norway, and Sweden in gold, silver, bronze order. Curling is still going and more medals will be awarded towards the end of the games. Also on ice, you have speed skating! Several Olympic and World records were broken by the Dutch. Most notably Irene Schouten broke 2 records, one in the 3,000m and the 5000m, and Ireen Wüst is the first who has won an individual gold medal at five different winter Olympics in speed skating! 

As for Luge, Germany won gold in all of the events- men's singles, women's singles, doubles for each, and they won the team relay event as well and it is the second time Germany has ever swept everything in luge at a single Games. Crazy! I am very excited for bobsled to start though, especially as the new event of monobob is introduced. 

Opening Ceremony and Athlete Fashion

When watching the Opening Ceremony, NBC provided a rundown of the politics that encircle these games from multiple angles. The announcers even brought in Chinese culture and government experts and warned that there might have been propaganda during the Opening Ceremony. At the beginning of February, the Lunar New Year rang in, so the ceremony focused on the new beginnings and the start of spring. With a huge LED floor and large LED sticks, the opening ceremony bloomed green like spring. Yet, the way that the cycle works it is not officially the season of spring yet, it is more of a gentle welcoming, so the ceremony then switched to displaying the different sports that will take place at the games. 

I will say, I was very impressed with the way that they introduced the rings. I always like to watch the opening ceremonies and think of what the performers are actually doing to create said rings. In London 2012, there was the Industrial Revolution theme to then form the steel rings that fizzled and sparked fireworks. Tokyo 2020, people worked together with wood as a message of sustainability to form wooden rings from trees that were planted from the 1964 Tokyo summer games. The Beijing 2022 rings were revealed from a large block of ice that broke apart to reveal a glowing set of blue rings. It's gorgeous. What I liked, even more, was that these rings were then lifted up so that when the athletes walked in, they walked underneath the rings. The holographic and glowing look of the rings and the athlete parade were really cool. 

I tend to go on long crazy tangents on the outfits from different countries on my Instagram stories, specifically me having a love-hate relationship with how Ralph Lauren handles the Team USA ceremony outfits. Tokyo 2020? Trust fund baby who is going on Daddy's yacht. Beijing 2022? Sleek and slightly retro warm clothes that I definitely want. The puffer ensemble for Team USA was great, I love the incorporation of colors, in comparison to only using white in the summer ceremonies. (-_-) I also loved how the flag carriers had a bright blue version of the jackets to make them stand out. Other countries I really enjoyed include the Czech Republic with the geometrical triangles and patterns on its coat! Very unique in comparison to a majority of the European countries only wearing black or white puffers (I'm looking at you Poland). Canada has a new partnership with Lululemon and they did a great job with the overall Canadian outfits for these games. I thought the ceremony outfits looked a little too puffy but everything else I've seen is really cool looking and I love the variation of red and white. Mexico had beautiful opening ceremony outfits! I love the flower crowns the women were wearing, the sugar skulls on their jackets, and the skeleton gloves that they were wearing. Super fun and cute! Haiti also had a really cool outfit design with all sorts of different patches, it reminded me of a NASCAR racer or pit crew design. Really cool!

Haiti

Mexico

Finland

Finland looked also cute in a light grey jacket and white fur lining their cuffs and their hats, super fancy yet warm. France and Italy were exactly the same and it pissed me off at how bad they were. You are telling me that Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Dior, and YSL are all in Paris. Then Versace, Dolce and Gabana, Prada, and Gorgio Armani are all in Milan and both of these countries come up with jackets that look exactly the same because of their vertical flag designs? Italy looks worse because it looks like a cheap poncho you would buy in Rome, but how could these designs slide, ESPECIALLY WHEN BOTH OF THESE NATIONS ARE HOSTING THE NEXT SUMMER AND WINTER OLYMPICS?! 

Italy

France

While the athletes were lead-in, the volunteer that lead them in held a glowing snowflake with the countries name in English and in Mandarin. Cute! Then all of the volunteers holding said snowflakes came together to then put it together into an even bigger snowflake! Love that! So cute to see all of the countries together on a pretty snowflake. Then they run the torch in. Huh? Where is the cauldron? Has it been revealed yet? Nope, still running it in, and finally, an Uyghur and Chinese athlete run the last torch to be placed in the center of the snowflake. What the heck is going on?! I'm a sucker for details and a sucker for traditions, but one of the key points that connect the modern Olympic games to the Ancient Greek Olympic games is the sacred fire that burns throughout the games. The flame that you saw at the opening ceremony went through a huge torch relay that started in Athens!!! I was disappointed there was no cauldron lighting, it looked so out of place put in the middle of a snowflake. I was then watching coverage during the week and they cut to a shot of the snowflake with the tiny flame in the center and it looked so stupid. I understand that said, "sacred fire" is still going, but the fuel reserves for that thing are so minuscule compared to keeping a symbolic cauldron lit throughout the games. What are they going to do during the closing ceremony? Blow it out?

You can hardly even see the torch in the center of the snowflake in this picture

Well actually hold on. I have a theory, and if I do, someone has to buy me ice cream. What if they hand it to the next hosts of the Winter Olympic games? In the closing ceremony, there tends to be a "passing of the torch" to the next host city/nation or a moment for the next host to hype up the audience in a reminder of where the next Olympics will be (specifically which type, they already hyped up Paris 2024 Summer Olympics during the Tokyo 2020 closing ceremony). What if they take the torch out of the snowflake and then give it to the Italian representatives for Milan 2026? It would be cool, but again, kinda throws the whole ancient torch relay that starts in Athens out of the window. 

A very exciting first week of the games! This next week is composed of exciting events like the women's and pairs figure skating programs, medals for hockey and curling, bobsled (!), skiing events in slopestyle and halfpipe, and more medals for speed skating and alpine skiing. Plus the closing ceremony! Will my theory be right? How will Milan 2026 introduce and hype itself upon the world stage? I guess we'll just wait and see! 

Thank you so much for reading, these recaps take me a long time, so I appreciate your support and feedback. I could just talk about the Olympics all day! Let me know what your favorite Winter Olympics sport to watch is!

love, 

yo girl emilia

Follow me on Instagram: @yogirlemilia