Beijing welcomes Winter Olympics against backdrop of politics and the pandemic

Fourteen years ago in Beijing’s Bird’s Nest Stadium, ninety thousand fans roared Usain Bolt down the home straight to shatter the men’s 100 metres world record and instantly establish one of the Olympic Games’ most indelible images.

On Saturday night in the Chinese capital, memories of Bolt’s 9.69 super-charge remained fresh in the memory, but the masked officials and plunging temperatures told a different story, of a Games that threaten to be remembered for all the wrong reasons.

Politics and a pandemic have blighted the build-up to the first Winter Games to be staged in the same city as its summer counterpart, albeit a forbidden one, consigned to a closed-loop bubble sealed off by security agents in hazmat suits.

For all the rules banning regular ticket sales, the Bird’s Nest was roughly half full of quarantined spectators for a constricted ceremony, clocking in at just over two hours, making it the shortest Olympic opening event for more than 40 years.

“Simple, safe, wonderful” was the message, and the ceremony certainly succeeded as a colourful artistic spectacle, a 11,600-square metre LED ice screen forming a basis to the spectacle that matched the millions of cubic tonnes of fake snow stockpiled on the pistes of Zhangjikou.

Chinese President Xi preceded a lavish firework display by declaring the Games open, before a low-key cauldron-lighting by two junior members of the current Chinese team.

Yet no amount of pomp can possibly extinguish the backdrop of allegations of genocide against Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, nor fears for press freedom that led many travelling delegations to pack burner phones along with their bobble hats.

Throw in the continued concerns over the well-being of tennis player Peng Shuai, and it