Winter Olympics – a short summary

Just like the Summer Olympics, Winter Olympic Games is an event which is held once every four years. It started for the first time in 1924 in France and been held every four years ever since except there was a huge gap after the 1936 games due to the World War II situation, so the next games were held directly in 1948, when the event took place in St. Moritz in Switzerland. Also, till 1992, both the summer and winter games were held in the same year, that is in the same four-year period. That is when IOC planned to conduct both the games in different four-year periods, preferably in alternate even-numbered years, so to create a new system, the next Winter games were held just two years after, in 1994 in Lillehammer, Norway.

Talking about Norway, they are the most successful nation in the Winter games, as they are on the top of the list when it comes to the all-time medal tally in the event. If you see the other top countries in terms of participation in every games and winning a greater number of medals, you’ll see how the event is mostly dominated by European countries, however we cannot ignore the contribution of Canada and USA. When it comes to Asia, Japan has hosted the event twice and is the most successful nation which followed by the likes of South Korea and China. South Korea held the last Winter Olympics in 2018 and China has won the bidding rights for the upcoming event in 2022.

Bidding process for the 2022 event and why Beijing was finalized

The bidding process for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games started way back in 2012, when the IOC announced the bidding calendar for the first time for the interested countries. The deadline to send the applications was set to be 14th November 2013, and the review process took the IOC Executive Board further 6-7 months. Finally, on July 7th 2014, they announced Oslo (Norway), Beijing (China) and Almaty (Kazakhstan) as the final three candidates.

Three major stakeholders play a very important role in any bidding process. The government as without its support and backing, hosting an event of this size is impossible. Second is the city council and the local governance and finally the national federations and respective Olympic Committee.

That’s exactly what didn’t work in favor of Norway as the Norwegian government rejected the application for required funding. The news about IOC member’s unpleasant demands also surfaced in the media, and that was considered as a main reason for the withdrawal of Norway as a host city. Now, with the frontrunner to win the hosting rights having had to withdraw, IOC was left with a choice between Beijing and Almaty.

It wasn’t until another year, that the host city was decided. The voting took place at the 128th IOC session which was held in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia and it was pretty close as well, as Beijing pipped Almaty by just four votes. 44 members voted in favor of Beijing, while the other 40 voted in favor of Almaty.

Main attractions of the event

Having hosted the Summer Olympics just a few years back in 2008, Beijing already has a lot of infrastructure which is going to be adapted and re-structured wherever required according to the needs for the Winter games.

During the 2008 games, Beijing introduced their main indoor stadium as Olympic Green, a term used to refer to the sustainable design and use of renewable energy to power the events. For the upcoming winter games in 2022, they further announced the use of renewable energy around all 26 venues, which further boosts the Olympic Green agenda. Apart from the opening and closing ceremony, the stadium is going to hold the curling event at the national aquatic center by making a few tweaks in the infrastructure, along with other popular events like speed skating and ice hockey.

When it comes to the Olympic village, the organizers had to find a new place in the southern area of the city, not too far from the Olympic Green. The original Olympic village built for the 2008 games was occupied by the local residents since 2009 so this newer village had to be built to accommodate the winter athletes.

The event is going to take place between 4th to 20th February 2022, and is going to have 109 events in total across 15 disciplines of 7 sports.

Wondering about the budget of the event? The estimated value is USD 3.9 billion as compared to a whopping $43 billion which was spent during the 2008 Summer games. The funny thing about the estimated budget for any Olympic games no matter who is hosting it is it always exceeds the estimated value. So, to make profits out of a 15-17 days event is pretty difficult unless the city has a clear-cut plan of using the infrastructure for other events or any other purposes, or else there is a huge risk of it being the ‘white elephant,’ which happened with Rio after the 2016 Summer games.

The other venues for the event include Yanqing district, which will be a home for the luge, bobsleigh and alpine skiing athletes, Zhangjiakou city in the Hebei province which will act as a Nordic and biathlon center for the respective events along with the snowboarding events.

As far as the transport is concerned, a new railway line across Beijing to Zhangjiakou and a newly opened Beijing Daxing International Airport will distribute the load amongst them.

Newly added games for 2022

Biathlon, bobsleigh, ice hockey, luge, curling, skiing and skating, we all know this are the main sports when it comes to Winter games, so what are the new additions?

Nordic combined is a cross-country event where the athletes compete in cross-country skiing as well as ski-jumping, an event which traditionally has had only men’s category in the Olympics. Well, there’s history to be made for the sport in Beijing as a separate women’s category for the game is about to debut after getting the initial sanction form the FIS (International Ski Federation).

Is that it for the new additions? No, we are just getting started.

A new ski-jumping mixed team competition along with fairly new discipline called as Big air is also anticipating a debut in the 2022 game. Big air is a discipline which consists of the participants ride a skateboard or a snowboard across a mountain slope or a ramp performing various tricks. The sport is set to have both men’s as well as women’s category in the upcoming games.

There are also many exciting news coming from the world of luge as the FIL (International Luge Federation) proposed six new additions. Men’s and women’s singles natural track luge, a separate women’s event on the artificial track luge along with the sprint events for both men and women including doubles at the artificial track are all set to hit the ground running in the next year’s games.

Telemark skiing (a mix of elements from Alpine as well as Nordic skiing) is another exciting event that is going to come to life in Beijing along with several new snowboarding events such as snowboard cross across men’s and women’s sides and mixed-team Alpine parallel event.

Slalom is also going to welcome a men’s, women’s and a mixed-team parallel special slalom event.

ISU (International Skating Union) is not looking to stay too far behind either when it comes to adding newer events to the game, as synchronized skating is already added under the discipline of figure skating.

And finally, if you are a biathlon fan, then look no further because the IBU (International Biathlon Union) has proposed a single-mix relay event which would in turn replace the four-person mixed-relay which took place at the 2018 games in Sochi and when it comes to the IBSF (Bobsleigh and Skeleton federation), there was initially a proposal to introduce a new mixed-team event which got the approval but the four-women event got rejected by the IOC. 

Indian athletes in the Winter Olympics- History, popularity and qualification scenarios for 2022 games

When it comes to the winter games, India isn’t considered to have any impact on the sport and we don’t see more than a couple of people at max making the required cut to participate. In 2018, our contingent had Jagdish Singh, who participated in the cross-country skiing along with the legendary Winter Olympian Shiva Keshavan, the lone Indian in the artificial luge category.

Shiva Keshavan, probably the most decorated name in the Indian winter sports world, is a six-time Olympian, whose very first entry to the Olympic games came in 1998 in Nagano. He’s 39 now and though he very much can train and participate in a record seventh games in 2022, he has decided to call it quits on his playing career and is now focused on developing a new generation of Indian luge athletes.

“I have had to keep a huge self-control in order to keep myself away from participating in the 2022 games. I very much can compete at the level but that’ll leave the next generation with no one to mentor. If not me, who else will? Said Shiva who is also the founder-president of the Olympic association of India and promotes the winter sports at the grass-roots level.

He knows preparing the young athletes for the upcoming games in 2022 is a tougher job and hence is focused on the long-term and has his sights on the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, due to held in 2026.

Very often, Shiva has been the only Indian athlete to have qualified for the winter games in future and hopes that it changes one day and the game eventually can attract the mainstream popularity.

When you go back in the history, it was in the year 1964 when for the very first time, an Indian athlete participated in the Winter Olympic when Jeremy Bujakowski, who competed in the Alpine skiing event in Innsbruck in Austria. The athlete of Polish origin, with his parents settled in India, learnt the art of skiing during his higher studies in the University of Denver inn Colorado, USA.

For the upcoming Winter Olympics in 2022, we have a couple of prospects which are looking good to qualify at the moment.

Vishwaraj Jadeja, 35-year-old originally from Dhrol in Gujarat, who started training in Copenhagen, Denmark 10 years back, with a plan of competing in the winter games one day, is confident about his chances of making the cut for the Olympics next year. Initially started on the roller skates, Vishwaraj made a switch to speed skating and now trains in Nederlands under a former Olympian Wim Nieuwenhuizen.

Arif Khan, India’s hope in the skiing department, has already had to miss the previous edition in Pyeongchang due to lack of funding and no sponsorships. Khan, who already has been to four world skiing championships, is already under the training in Switzerland and is hopeful of making a cut when the qualifying scenarios will be disclosed around June this year. He initially trained in Gulmarg in Kashmir but the facilities are still not up to the level of which the top athletes in the world get, so it’s difficult but he’s trying to make the most out of every opportunity he gets.

Jagadish Singh, who competed in the men’s 15km freestyle race at the Alpensia Cross-Country Skiing Centre in Pyeongchang in 2018, believes India can definitely bag a medal or two in the 2022 edition in Beijing, if provided with the proper training facilities. Jagdish who finished 103rd out of 119 athletes who started the race in 2018, is hopeful about making it to the upcoming games now that he has some experience under his belt. The 2018 experience was far from what he had hoped, whether it was missing the flight to not getting proper facilities to train or lack of sponsorships, he hopes the future offers better opportunities not only for him, but for every other athlete wanting to pursue the Winter sports in India.