It is 10:15 p.m. local time on February 4, 2022, when in a simple moment the Olympic flame is lit in the Beijing Olympic Stadium. From now on, the fire blazes in the middle of a large snowflake, whose crystals show the names of the 91 participating countries. The inflammation itself: a sensation. Because no superstar was chosen, but two young athletes: the combined athlete Zhao Jiawen and cross-country skier Dinigeer Yilamujiang.
For one day it was on everyone’s lips globally, but today hardly anyone remembers it. It was also one of the most political maneuvers in sports history. Because Yilamujiang is Uyghur and belongs to a Muslim minority that was and is being interned and tortured in camps. Beijing provides a prime example of how the old IOC formula that sport and the Olympics are apolitical seems outdated. When things get uncomfortable, you still like to retreat into it.
IOC official Richard Pound confirmed on Deutschlandfunk with full conviction that he knew nothing about human rights violations in Xinjiang and also: “The IOC has no power, no mandate. It has no role to play in changing policy.”
But the IOC is always part of world politics, as Beijing proves impressively. In addition to IOC President Thomas Bach and China’s head of state Xi Jinping, who officially opened the games, there were Vladimir Putin from Russia, the Saudi crown prince and the Egyptian president in the official gallery. There was talk of a banquet of autocrats, and many from the West in particular joined the boycott first announced by US President Biden. Members of the German federal government also stayed away from the opening ceremony.
Bach met missing tennis player Peng Shuai
The human rights situation in China also made global headlines in a sporting context. Concerns were high over Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai, who three months before the opening ceremony accused the country’s top politician of sexually abusing her on social media. Since then, Peng Shuai was considered missing. IOC President Thomas Bach phoned Peng Shuai, probably to take some of the international pressure off the IOC before the Winter Games.
Shortly before the opening ceremony, Bach met Peng Shuai in a Beijing hotel. Apart from polite phrases, little was learned after the conversation. Olympics in China, sensitive for the IOC because of the human rights situation, that was also the case in 2008, at the Summer Games, back then with IOC President Jacques Rogge. “The most important thing in the end is that the world looked closely at China during the Games and China opened up to the world, the world got to know China and China got to know the world. I think that will have a positive effect in the long term .”
Human rights organizations see the situation worsening
But the attention on the 2008 Summer Games did not improve the situation. Human rights organizations even see a deterioration and so now, 14 years later, the questions are even louder. Now that Beijing is becoming the first city ever to be allowed to host both the Summer and Winter Games. Now that the games begin with a simple ceremony compared to the summer edition of 2008.
30,000 specially invited people are now sitting at a distance in a half-full stadium – Winter Games under the influence of the corona pandemic. Strict rules, with a separate Olympic bubble around the athletes and officials, make many uneasy. And despite all the strict precautionary measures, several hundred Covid-19 infections occurred in connection with the games; prominent athletes such as Norway’s ski jumper Daniel Andre Tande or the German combined Olympic champion from 2014 and 2018, Eric Frenzel, missed the games entirely partially.
“So far we have had a total of four positive cases in Team D, which were also confirmed, one of our DOSB employees very early on and now two confirmed cases after the Nordic combined athletes arrived,” explains team doctor Bernd Wohlfahrt in Beijing.
The pandemic had the games and also the images of the games under control. As the Games’ greatest asset because they are sold at a high price, they are fundamentally important for the IOC. Award ceremonies with masks, empty stands, all of this had to be staged – of course produced in the usual high gloss.
The influences of climate change are becoming clear
Just like the images of the smallest white bands of snow in grey-black desert landscapes, which made the influences of climate change on world sport clear to the whole world in a way that was hardly ever seen before. From a German perspective, most of the attention was focused on the incredibly expensive Yanqing National Sliding Center: in ten competitions here, the German team won nine gold medals, six silver medals and one bronze medal – almost three quarters of all German medals at the Games.
The bobsleigh and toboggan run in Yanqing will then also be the scene of a political demonstration that is unusual at the Olympics and actually not wanted by the ring organizers. The Ukrainian skeleton pilot Vladyslav Heaskevych, who finished in 18th place, holds a sign into the camera that reads “No war in Ukraine”.
Heraskevych: “At the moment when I held up the sign, there was already information that Russian troops were already stationed at our border,” he later told Deutschlandfunk. “When I held up the sign, I wanted to show that we too are just normal people. We’re not Nazis or anything crazy like that. We just want to live a life without war. And of course my goal was to end this aggression.”
An impending war in Europe has also weighed on these Winter Games in Beijing since the opening ceremony. In his speech, Thomas Bach appealed to refrain from acts of war during the competitions. “Remember your commitment to this Olympic ceasefire. Give peace a chance,” he said in the Games’ opening ceremony. At the end, Thomas Bach praised Beijing again and spoke of very successful games.
Olympic truce quickly over
And again, as so often, that the Olympics and politics are two different things: “The Olympic Games and their athletes really stand above the division and tensions that we are currently experiencing on the political level.”
The Olympic Truce, also known as the Olympic Peace, an invention of the ancient games 800 years before Christ, will also be signed and launched as a special resolution by the United Nations before the Beijing Games. But it doesn’t last long.
Because when the Olympic flame went out on February 20th at 9:37 p.m. local time, it took less than 100 hours, less than four days, until Russia began its attack on Ukraine.