BEIJING — Thousands of performers skipped
and gyrated on a 125,000-square-foot, high-definition LED stage programmed to
resemble a sheet of shimmering ice.
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A parade of athletes from 90 countries and
territories snaked through them, bundled in puffer jackets and masked because
of the pandemic. Together, they waved their mitten-covered hands and national
flags toward knots of spectators scattered around the swooping stands of
China’s National Stadium.
On a cold Friday
night in
Beijing, a boisterous, Technicolor ceremony brought to a start one of
the most logistically complicated, tightly controlled, and politically fraught
Olympic Games in history. Against this extraordinary backdrop, Beijing
officially became the first city to host both a Summer and
Winter Olympics.
“Tonight, the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 is
opening as scheduled,” said Cai Qi, president of the Beijing organizing
committee, “and a long-cherished dream is becoming a reality.”
In 2008, in this same building, China had aimed to
signal a new open stance toward the global community. What message, then, was
this spectacle, this ceremony, these Games, meant to send to the world?
The question had been posed to Thomas Bach, the
president of the
International Olympic Committee, a German lawyer (and gold
medalist fencer) often inclined to speak in winding paragraphs, the night
before the ceremony. His response was six words.
“China is a winter sport country,” Bach said.
The answer, in its brevity, its modesty, spoke
volumes about the mood that has permeated the Olympic movement through the
run-up to these Games. Throughout history, athletes, politicians, fans, and
commentators have regularly heralded international sports as an arena, symbol
and trigger for social change. But in the last six months, the IOC — in
response to relentless questioning from activists, journalists, athletes, and
fans — has taken great pains to emphasize how narrow its influence actually
was, how little power it actually had to affect the world.
In any context, the Olympics continue to represent a
sprawling festival of shared humanity and sports achievement. In a polarized
world, few things can bring together so many people from so many corners of the
globe.
But these may nevertheless end up a Winter Games of
limitations, of tempered expectations, of cold pragmatism.
However the evening was interpreted, China had its
own message for the sports world, relayed over the course of the two-hour
ceremony in the stadium known as the Bird’s Nest.
There were 3,000 performers, far fewer than the
15,000 who appeared at the four-hour ceremony that opened the
Summer Games in 2008. They were, according to organizers, “ordinary people,” students of all ages
from the Beijing and Hebei provinces.
It was a shorter, simpler, stripped-down ceremony,
because of both the subfreezing cold and the pandemic, which, despite the
pageantry, frosted the proceedings.
The spectators — specially invited because tickets
were not available to the general public — occasionally ignored the guidance of
organizers to refrain from cheering to stop the potential spread of the
coronavirus.
“The mission of these Olympic Games, like any
Olympic Games, is bringing the world together in peaceful competition,” Bach
said, “uniting humankind in all our diversity, always building bridges, never,
ever erecting walls.”
The irony, to some, will be that no Olympics has
ever featured this many walls, in the “bubble” China created to keep out the
virus. The walls appear here in all shapes and sizes.
Walls surrounded the National Stadium where the
ceremony took place, the athletes’ villages, the venues and the main press
center, separating the Games from the city in which they were operating. Tall fences,
monitored by guards, ring the many hotels where international journalists and
other Olympic participants are spending the next two weeks. Clear partitions
even separate people in event dining halls.
The ceremony, in a sense, was an effort to revive
some of the communal spirit of the Games.
Athletes from traditional Winter Games powers like
Norway, the United States, Russia and Canada marched between first-time nations
like Haiti, Saudi Arabia, Uganda and Vietnam.
The flag bearers for the US were speedskater
Brittany Bowe and gold medalist curler John Shuster. Bobsledder
Elana Meyers Taylor had originally been picked to carry the flag, but she tested positive
for the coronavirus upon arrival in Beijing and was, like a number of other
athletes here, forced into isolation.
“Our hearts go out to the athletes who because of
the pandemic cannot make their dreams come true,” Bach said at the ceremony.
The athletes will be competing at a Games that
continues to evolve its competitions for the times. The IOC, for instance, has
labored to establish equal representation for men and women at its Games. The
percentage of female competitors here will be 45%, up from 41% at the 2018
Olympics in South Korea.
Still, the mood around these Winter Games, in other
ways, has felt lukewarm.
International sponsors and broadcasters, for
instance, have tamped down their normal promotions surrounding the Games,
playing down the host nation. News outlets around the world, including several
from the US, elected to send stripped-down crews or in some cases skipped the
Games altogether.
All of this has given off the impression that the
Winter Games, in some ways, will be less savored and celebrated than endured.
The IOC can look ahead to its lineup of upcoming
host cities: Paris in 2024, Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo in 2026, Los Angeles in
2028.
But first come two weeks of competition in Beijing
and its surrounding mountains, where athletes will strive for a feeling of
normalcy in highly abnormal times, in a profoundly abnormal setting.
In the closing moments of the ceremony, Bach, in
English and Chinese, wished the crowd a happy Lunar New Year. Chinese President
Xi Jinping stood, removed his mask and declared the Games open. The Olympic
cauldron was lit.
With a fairly typical burst of music and fireworks, an
atypical Olympics was officially underway.
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