Brute force, raw emotions: six things lying ahead at the Winter Paralympics

When the Winter Olympics closed on 20 February the main talking points were another Russian doping scandal and the International Olympic Committee’s controversial decision to award the Games to China. Fast forward just 12 days to Friday’s opening ceremony for the 2022 Beijing Winter Paralympics, and the Games will open under an entirely different geopolitical cloud. Here is some of what we can anticipate over the next week and a half in China.

The Winter Paralympics are a modest affair compared with their summer counterpart – 78 gold medals are on offer across six sports between Saturday 5 March and Sunday 13 March, two events fewer than in 2018. Around 650 athletes from 49 nations were expected to compete before the IPC banned Russia and Belarus, and they will contest alpine skiing, cross-country skiing, biathlon, snowboarding, wheelchair curling and para ice hockey. The opening ceremony takes place at noon UK time on Friday 4 March.

Ukraine have an excellent Winter Paralympics track record, with seven golds in Pyeongchang in 2018, and they finished fourth in the medal table in Sochi 2014, when they similarly competed during a Russian invasion of their homeland. Their full delegation of 20 athletes and nine guides is expected to reach Beijing and will compete in biathlon and cross-country skiing. Athletes had been warned before the Winter Olympics about making political statements that could upset the host nation, but we can anticipate a huge show of solidarity for Ukraine’s athletes from their peers.

Team GB went into the Winter Olympics with a target of three to seven medals, and ended up with only two. The British Paralympians in Beijing have a chance to perform better – they won seven in Pyeongchang. This year the