Beijing Winter Olympics: if you’re watching from Australia, here’s what you need to know

The opening ceremony is set to be staged on Friday, 4 February, from 11pm AEDT at Beijing’s National Stadium, and run until the closing ceremony at the same venue on Sunday, 20 February from 1pm AEDT.

In keeping with tradition, competition has already started with the curling and luge under way. Australia’s very first curling team, Tahli Gill and Dean Hewitt, lost their opening two round-robin matches on Wednesday and Thursday. Australian Alexander Ferlazzo also completed two luge training runs overnight.

The short answer is Beijing, which is the first city to host both a summer and winter Games following the 2008 summer Olympics. Those who remember the famous “Water Cube” which hosted the swimming in 2008 will this time be treated to the “Ice Cube” – the pool has been converted into a four-sheet curling rink.

The slightly longer answer is that there are three cluster sites: one in Beijing proper and two others in the nearby mountainous regions of Yanqing and Zhangjiakou. Yanqing is a northern suburban district about 80km from the city centre. The Zhangjiakou zone in the neighbouring province of Hebei is about 220km from central Beijing.

The Guardian will be extensively live blogging each day of the Games, while the action will be broadcast by Channel 7 and streamed on 7 Plus. Curling is among the earliest sports to get under way each day, from 8:35am local time – 11:35am AEDT, as Beijing is three hours behind AEDT.

About 2,800 athletes from 90 countries are expected to compete across 15 disciplines: alpine skiing, biathlon, bobsleigh, cross-country skiing, curling, figure skating, freestyle skiing, ice hockey, luge, nordic combined, short-speed skating, skeleton, ski jumping, snowboarding and speed skating.

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