| Hosts: Beijing, China Dates: 4-20 February |
| Protection: Watch continue to exist BBC TV, BBC iPlayer, BBC Purple Button and on-line; pay attention on BBC Radio 5 Reside and BBC Sounds; reside textual content and highlights on BBC Recreation web site and cellular app |
The Beijing Wintry weather Olympics got here to a detailed on Sunday in a touching rite.
Virtually 3,000 athletes competed in 109 occasions throughout 15 disciplines all the way through the previous two weeks.
World Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach referred to as for political leaders “around the globe” to be impressed by means of the athletes’ “instance of cohesion and peace”.
“This unifying energy of the Olympic Video games is more potent than the forces that need to divide us,” he mentioned.
Bach mentioned the athletes had “given peace a possibility,” together with his feedback coming amid emerging tensions between Russia and Ukraine.
“Every one in all you strived to reach your individual easiest. We have been deeply touched the way you have been wishing and cheering on your competition to reach their easiest as neatly,” he mentioned.
“You no longer best revered each and every different: you embraced each and every different, even though your nations are divided by means of war.”
Bach additionally inspired nations to proceed vaccinating in opposition to Covid-19, announcing: “If we need to in spite of everything conquer this pandemic, we will have to be sooner.
“We will have to goal upper, we will have to be more potent, we will have to stand in combination. Vaccination approach taking good care of each and every different.
“On this Olympic spirit of cohesion, we name at the world group: give equivalent get entry to to vaccines for everyone around the globe.”
Nice Britain go away Beijing with two medals – gold within the girls’s curling and silver within the males’s match.
Curling skip Bruce Mouat, who led the lads’s rink, was once the flagbearer for Crew GB on the ultimate rite.
The Olympic flame was once extinguished, with the following Video games going down in Milan-Cortina in Italy in 2026. The Wintry weather Paralympics starts in Beijing on 4 March.
Valieva saga overshadows Video games
The Beijing Video games have been engulfed by means of the talk surrounding Russian determine skater Kamila Valieva and {the teenager}’s failed drug check.
The certain check got here to mild after the Russian Olympic Committee received gold within the staff determine skating, with the 15-year-old turning into the primary girl to land a quadruple soar at an Olympic Video games.
Alternatively, the medal rite was once not on time, with it coming to mild that Valieva had examined certain for a banned drug used to forestall angina assaults.
After a sequence of appeals and re-appeals, Valieva was once allowed to compete in the rest person occasions, however it has ended in questions about her training staff and the equity of kids competing in Olympic occasions, specifically as she crumbled in her ultimate match.
Not one of the podium athletes from the development have won their medals, with the IOC asking the Global Anti-Doping Company (Wada) to analyze the certain consequence.
“Each and every athlete needs an even enjoying box and we additionally need to give protection to the well being and psychological well being of athletes,” two-time Olympic champion Lizzy Yarnold mentioned on BBC TV.
“The largest factor I’ve realized is remembering athletes are people. We want to give protection to our younger athletes.”
There were moments of brightness. Norway will go away Beijing with a document 16 gold medals and 37 in overall, having ruled within the snow.
China’s 18-year-old Eileen Gu changed into one of the most stars of the Video games with gold within the giant air and halfpipe, whilst snowboarder Shaun White closed his occupation at the slopes.
The largest carrying wonder was once The united states’s Mikaela Shiffrin, a heavy pre-Video games favorite to wash up within the snowboarding occasions. She crashed out of 3 of her easiest occasions and didn’t organize to clutch a medal within the others.
Whilst the Video games had been a good fortune for China, who secured their easiest Wintry weather Olympics medal haul, questions over human rights abuses and the protection of tennis participant Peng Shuai that ruled the build-up to the contest stay.
Blended feelings for Crew GB
That is Nice Britain’s lowest medal overall since 2010, the place they received a sole gold within the girls’s skeleton.
UK Recreation set a goal of 3 to seven medals however there have been numerous near-misses and sadness within the sliding occasions, making it the primary time since 2002 that Britain have did not win a skeleton medal.
Snowboarder Charlotte Bankes, 2018 skeleton bronze medallist Laura Deas and alpine skier Dave Ryding have been some of the medal hopes, however struggled for rhythm and shape in Beijing.
Britain’s first medal of the Video games got here on Saturday within the males’s curling, earlier than Eve Muirhead’s rink claimed gold at the ultimate day.
Sally Munday, the manager govt of UK Recreation, mentioned the “biggest development can come if we in point of fact be informed from sadness”.
“I additionally know that while the closing 24 hours has created actual pleasure, there are a variety of our athletes who will go away Beijing dissatisfied,” Munday wrote.
“While there were some memorable performances, many didn’t succeed in the effects they got here for and nobody will likely be extra dissatisfied than the athletes themselves.
“We at all times knew that Beijing 2022 could be a problem like not anything that they had in the past skilled.
“We additionally know that the jeopardy that makes sports activities on snow and ice this kind of compelling spectacle for the ones people gazing may be a recipe for uncertainty. This undeniably performed its phase in fighting a few of our medal hopes from attaining their desires.”
