Daily Archives: February 7, 2022

The 2022 Beijing Olympics have arrived, and they come at a unique time just months after the Summer Games took place in August after being delayed amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, the United States is geared up and ready to compete in the Winter Olympics as they hope to once again come out of the event atop the medal count.

Do not fret at being less than prepared for these Winter Games. CBS Sports is here to track the entire event from the Opening Ceremony this past Friday to the Closing Ceremony on Feb. 20. In this space, you can find everything you need to know about Team USA's performances, from Shaun White trying to end his Olympics career with a gold medal to the women's hockey squad vying for their second consecutive first-place finish.

These key links will get you started in your journey, while the live updates below will chronicle every bit of important news plus the major events and medal opportunities that Team USA achieves over the course of the two-week Games.

Olympics 2022: Medal count | Daily schedule| Men's hockey | Women's hockey | Shaun White|Mikaela Shiffrin

Team events and medal rounds | All times Eastern

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Winter Olympics 2022: Team USA schedule, live results tracker, United States medal count from Beijing Games - CBSSports.com

BEIJING (AP) The Latest on the Beijing Winter Olympics:

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The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations says Chinas selection of a Uyghur athlete to help deliver the Olympic flame in Beijing was an attempt by Chinese officials to distract from global attention on its human rights violations.

The United States is staging a diplomatic boycott of the Olympics, sending athletes but not the traditional delegation of dignitaries, citing Chinas alleged systemic and widespread abuse of ethnic and religious minorities in its western region, especially Xinjiangs predominantly Muslim Uyghurs.

Chinas selection of cross-country skier Dinigeer Yilamujiang for the honor of being a final Olympic torchbearer at the ceremony that opened the Winter Games was a big surprise.

To U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, that choice was an effort by the Chinese to distract us from the real issue here at hand, that Uyghurs are being tortured, and Uyghurs are the victims of human rights violations by the Chinese.

And she told CNNs State of the Union that we have to keep that front and center.

The U.S. says China is committing genocide in its treatment of the Uyghurs. China denies any abuses and says the steps it has taken are necessary to combat terrorism and a separatist movement.

The American diplomat says we have made clear that crimes against humanity are being committed in China.

She added: It is important that the audience who participated and witnessed this understand that this does not take away from what we know is happening on the ground there.

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President Joe Bidens national security adviser says the United States did not go around the world knocking on every country door trying to organize a diplomatic boycott of the Winter Olympics in China.

The U.S. did not send a delegation of dignitaries to Beijing but is allowing American athletes to complete. Major U.S. allies like Britain, Australia and Canada followed suit, also citing human rights abuses by the Chinese government. But an array of world leaders did attend the opening ceremonies.

Sullivan told NBCs Meet the Press on Sunday that the Biden administration made a statement of principle about what we, the United States, were going to do. He says some nations joined the U.S. and others made a different decision.

But he cited the broad level of alignment among like-minded democracies coming together on a range of challenges that China poses, whether its in the realm of military aggression or in the realm of economic coercion or in the realm of human rights.

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Johannes Ludwig of Germany is the Olympic champion in mens luge, adding that to the World Cup overall title he won this season.

Its the 11th time in 16 Olympics that a German man counting the days of East Germany and West Germany in there has won the luge title. Wolfgang Kindl of Austria was second and Dominik Fischnaller of Italy was third.

Ludwig led after all four heats. He set the tone for Sundays final two runs of the competition by setting a track record leading off the third heat, putting more pressure on everyone else in the field to catch him.

Nobody did. Only Kindl came close. Chris Mazdzer was the top American, finishing eighth.

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Jakara Anthony of Australia has captured the womens moguls title at the Beijing Olympics.

Anthonys back flip with a grab at the bottom of the course sewed up the gold medal Sunday on the Secret Garden Olympic course. Her score of 83.09 edged American Jaelin Kauf, who had been poised to pick up the first gold medal for Team USA in China.

Russian athlete Anastasiia Smirnova earned the bronze while defending champion Perrine Laffont of France finished fourth.

The 23-year-old Anthony joins Dale Begg-Smith as the only Aussies to win the Olympic event. Begg-Smith earned his title at the 2006 Turin Games.

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Japans Ryoyu Kobayashi has won Olympic ski jumping gold on the normal hill.

Kobayashi jumped last and best, clearing 99.5 meters (326 feet) and had 129.6 points thanks to his graceful style from start to finish that won over the judges.

Austrias Manuel Fettner won silver and Dawid Kubacki of Poland earned bronze.

Two-time ski jumping gold medalist Andreas Wellinger is missing the Beijing Games because he tested positive for the coronavirus last week, clearing the way for a new champion in China

Earlier in the night, Turkish ski jumper Fatih Arda pciolu refused to say if the crescent and star on his blue skis was a statement in support of Chinas Uyghur community. The design on the skis used Saturday seemingly represented East Turkestan, the region home to Uyghurs. pciolu finished deep in the field of 50.

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Turkish ski jumper Fatih Arda pciolu refused to say if the crescent and star on his blue skis was a statement in support of Chinas Uyghur community.

The design on the skis used Saturday seemingly represented East Turkestan, the region home to Uyghurs.

I dont want to answer about those questions, pciolu said Sunday night after jumping in the first round of the Normal Hill competition.

pciolu switched skis on Sunday, saying the pair he had were for the competition.

Im a sportsman, he bristled. I do just my job. The other things, I dont care about. Its not my job.

Human rights groups say the Beijing government has oppressed members of the Uyghur Muslim minority on a massive scale.

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Finland mens hockey player Marko Anttila remains at an isolation hotel at the Beijing Games after testing positive for the coronavirus.

Coach Jukka Jalonen says nothing has changed with Anttila, who recovered from COVID-19 last month and has been unable to produce two negative tests that would allow him to return to the team. Jalonen and Finland players say Anttila is fully healthy and has no symptoms.

Jalonen confirmed Anttila is Finlands only player in isolation.

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Defending champion Mikaela Shiffrin will set off seventh on the first run of the womens giant slalom at the Beijing Games on Monday.

Shiffrins main rival, Slovakian Petra Vlhova, will ski first.

The 26-year-old Shiffrin is bidding for a third Olympic gold medal. It would be a first for Vlhova, and a first in Alpine skiing for Slovakia.

Sara Hector, who leads the World Cup giant slalom standings, starts just before Shiffrin. The Swedish skier is also looking for a first Olympic medal.

The two-leg giant slalom will be raced at 9:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. Beijing time on The Ice River course at Yanqing Alpine Skiing Center.

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Two-time Olympic figure skating champion Yuzuru Hanyu has arrived in Beijing two days before hes due at Capital Indoor Stadium for the start of the mens program.

The Japanese star is trying to become the first figure skater since Swedens Gillis Grafstrom in 1928 to win three straight titles.

Hanyu took a similar approach four years ago in Pyeongchang, when he remained at his Canadian training base until two days before the start of his program. But that was pre-pandemic, and Hanyu took a risk that upon arrival in Beijing he would return the negative COVID-19 test required of anyone entering the Olympic bubble.

Hanyu is coming off his sixth Japanese championship in December. The Winnie-the-Pooh-loving wunderkind is expected to try the quad axel during his free skate, a 4 1/2-revolution jump that has never been landed in competition.

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Nils van der Poel gave Sweden its first Olympic speedskating medal since 1988, pulling off a stunning comeback to win gold in the 5,000 meters at the Beijing Olympics.

Van der Poel was a big favorite coming into the event as the reigning world champion with an undefeated record in the distance events on this seasons World Cup circuit.

He lived up to the hype in the 12 1/2-lap race at the Ice Ribbon oval, turning on the speed at the end to overcome Patrick Roest of the Netherlands with an Olympic record of 6 minutes, 8.84 seconds.

Roest had skated about an hour earlier in the sixth of 10 pairs, initially breaking the Olympic mark in 6.09.31.

It looked as though van der Poel would come up short, too. Then the Swede kicked it into another gear.

He thrilled the sparse crowd by slicing into Roests time with each stride. Turns out, van der Poel had just enough time to win gold.

The bronze went to Norways Hallgeir Engebraaten in 6:09.88.

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Sven Kramers quest for a fourth straight speedskating gold medal in the 5,000 meters ended quickly.

The 35-year-old Dutchman skated in the first pair of the day at Beijings Ice Ribbon and finished the grueling race in 6 minutes, 17.04 seconds. Two pairs later, both skaters posted faster times.

Kramer was the first male skater to win the same event at three straight Olympics, but hes no longer the worlds dominant long-distance performer at the oval. Four years ago, he won gold at Pyeongchang in 6:09.76.

Kramer plans to retire after the Beijing Games, but he still has a couple of events to go. Hell also compete in the mass start and team pursuit.

No matter what, Kramer is already assured of leaving the sport as the most decorated speedskater in Olympic history with nine medals over the last four Olympics, including four golds.

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The Australian mixed doubles curling team of Dean Hewitt and Tahli Gill pulled off a dramatic first win in their first Olympics when they beat Switzerland hours after it appeared they would be headed home because Gill returned a series of positive COVID-19 tests.

Greeted by an occasional chant of Aussie Aussie Aussie! by a spectator in the mostly empty Ice Cube, Hewitt and Gill beat Switzerlands Martin Rios and Jenny Perret 9-6. Gill had the big knockout shot to secure a 3-end, or three points, in the sixth end to tie the game at 6-6.

The first-ever Olympic curling team from Australia improved to 1-7. Their final game is against their coach, defending gold medalist John Morris of Canada and his new partner, Rachel Homan.

The Australian Olympic Committee announced earlier in the day that Gill and Hewitt would be heading home after Gill, who had COVID-19 before the games, returned a series of positive tests. But the committee said the Medical Expert Panel determined Gills levels fell within an acceptable range. Gill said she was not infectious.

The Aussies got a call about an hour before the game that they could play and jumped into a cab to get to the venue. Gill said she had to grab her uniform out of her suitcases, which were already packed.

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Russian skier Alexander Bolshunov pulled away from the pack early to win gold in the 30-kilometer skiathlon.

Bolshunov, the World Cup points leader in distance races, grabbed a Russian Olympic Committee flag in the final stretch and waved it in the air as he crossed the finish line in 1 hour, 16 seconds.

Bolshunov and Iivo Niskanen of Finland led the race through the first four classic ski laps but Russias Denis Spitsov passed Niskanen once they were on the freestyle legs.

Spitsov stayed out front and secured the silver, 1 minute, 11 seconds behind Bolshunov. Niskanen held on for the bronze 2 minutes back.

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Chinese teenager Su Yiming had the surprise top score in the mens Olympic slopestyle qualifying round.

Throwing a triple cork, the sort of trick most riders save for finals, Su finished with a score of 86.80. It topped his idol, Mark McMorris of Canada, and defending Olympic champion Red Gerard, who also both advanced to Mondays final.

The 17-year-old Su clapped his hands in excitement after finishing his first-round run as a sparse audience in the stands cheered. Su won a big air competition in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, in December. His best slopestyle finish on the World Cup circuit was sixth on New Years Day.

Gerard wound up fifth in qualifying and McMorris second. The top 12 riders moved on.

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Alpine skiings power couple will have a busy day on the Olympic slopes as long as the wind calms down, that is.

Mikaela Shiffrin and Aleksander Aamodt Kilde are now both supposed to race Monday after the mens downhill was pushed back a day because of too-strong gusts at the scheduled start Sunday. Shiffrin and Kilde are dating.

Kilde is considered the man to beat in the downhill. The Norwegian leads the World Cup standings in that event and was fastest during training in China on Friday.

Shiffrin is the defending Olympic champion in the womens giant slalom, which already was on the Alpine program for Monday.

The two-leg GS will be raced at 9:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. on the technical slope at Yanqing Alpine Skiing Center. In between those runs, the downhill will be held at noon on the speed slope about a half-mile away.

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The Australian mixed doubles curling team received a late reprieve and returned to competition at the Beijing Olympics after an earlier announcement that it would head home after Tahli Gill returned a series of positive COVID-19 tests.

The Australian Olympic Committee said Gill and Dean Hewitt could continue under the close contact provisions.

We are thrilled for Tahli and Dean and I am delighted that our headquarters team continued pressing her case, after earlier advice that the pair could no longer compete, said Geoff Lipshut, head of the Australian delegation.

Gill and Hewitt, representing Australias first-ever Olympic curling team, were back at the Ice Cube in time to play Switzerland in the round robin competition. They are winless in seven games.

Gill contracted COVID-19 prior to the games. Ongoing testing alternated between negative and positive. She had been allowed to compete under the close contact arrangements after discussions with the IOC and games organizers. The AOC said earlier Sunday that initial attempts to return Gill to competition were rebuffed by the IOC and health authorities.

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The International Olympic Committee says Olympic officials will meet with Netherlands state broadcaster NOS, which has been frustrated by fallout from its journalist being manhandled by a games security official during a live report.

NOS, which pays rights fees for the Beijing Olympics, disputed comments made Saturday by an IOC spokesman that it was contacted about the incident.

In a rare public criticism of the IOC by an official rights holder, NOS said none of its management nor reporter Sjoerd Den Daas had spoken to anyone from the Olympic body.

China-based Den Daas was pushed away from the camera by the guard while broadcasting live on Friday evening before the opening ceremony.

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Live updates from the 2022 Beijing Olympics - Associated Press

YANQING, China At this point, Mikaela Shiffrin has gotten used to a certain rhythm to her life. Every four years, the world appears on her doorstep and asks how many medals she is going to win at the Olympics.

After all, she is, by many accounts, the best skier in the world.

Yet for several years now, Shiffrin has been trying to explain that Alpine skiing, with its microscopic margins for error and its laundry list of uncertainties, is not that predictable. A shift as subtle as a gust of wind, or the movement of a cloud that allows sunlight to soften the snow in the middle of a race, can make the difference between a gold medal and 11th place.

On Monday, the lesson was evident: She slid off course during her first run in the giant slalom and is out of contention for a medal in that event.

It proved again what even the worlds best skiers know, that years of preparation and training can mean little at the Olympics if conditions and circumstances do not cooperate. It is a reality that this year has driven Shiffrin to try not to overthink what she is about to confront on a mountain she and almost everyone else will be racing on for the first time.

When the wind is like this, were just going to have to know that you could do everything right and get a gust of wind, and thats that, Shiffrin said of the competition that will unfold on the blustery, unfamiliar terrain of the Yanqing National Alpine Skiing Center.

Depending on her results, her energy level and the schedule, she might compete in all five individual races at these Games, starting with the giant slalom on Monday. The idea that she might not win any of them, through no fault of her own but because of bad luck, she admits, is a little bit of a bummer.

It is one of the great frustrations of Alpine skiing. Nothing solidifies an athletes status as one of the greats like an Olympic medal. But those medals can be won, or lost, in as little as two minutes.

The globe winner is the best skier of the whole season, Vincent Kriechmayr of Austria said on Friday, referring to the glass trophy awarded to the World Cup champion each year. But being an Olympic champion is one of the most important goals you can reach in your career.

As the wind blew snow across the finish area in Yanqing last week, Kriechmayr spoke in a downcast tone, which made sense. He has a crystal globe and four world championship medals two of them gold but he has yet to win an Olympic medal.

Feb. 7, 2022, 6:32 a.m. ET

Its critical to a legacy, said Lindsey Vonn, the retired champion. She won the downhill at the 2010 Vancouver Games, a triumph she described as the transformational event in her life in her autobiography, Rise.

It was on my mind going into Vancouver, Vonn said. To truly be great, I had to win at the Olympics.

As Shiffrin heads to the starting hut on Monday to defend her gold medal in the giant slalom, the argument for the sheer randomness of the Olympic Alpine competition has most likely never been stronger. There are the usual array of uncontrollable factors that nature can deliver at any ski race, including bright sunshine and warming temperatures that can soften the snow and make the course slower with each passing minute.

In Yanqing, an exposed, blustery and rocky peak, skiers have been saying for days that the wind could be the leading differentiator between the podium and also-rans, which means a life-changing medal could be determined by the luck of the bib draw that assigns starting places. A difference of half a second, Travis Ganong of the United States said after his training run on Friday.

There is also the cruel truth of the sport, in which there is rarely time to recover from a slight slip or a momentary catching of a ski edge. Shiffrin won her fifth crystal globe in slalom in 2018, but she finished fourth in the Olympic slalom competition at the Pyeongchang Games that year because of a rough night of sleep before the race.

And then there is the newness of the slopes at Yanqing. Olympic competitions often take place on mountains that are not part of the World Cup circuit, but every skier at Yanqing is racing the courses for the first time because the coronavirus pandemic prevented the traditional test events from taking place in the year before the Games.

We know the hill is steep and all the snow is man-made and maybe going to be cold, Paula Moltzan, a teammate of Shiffrins, said as she prepared to travel to China from Europe. But every microclimate has its own type of snow.

So far, the dry cold of Yanqing has kept the snow crisp, light and hard, but the forecast is for warming temperatures throughout the week and an unpredictable wind.

Shiffrin has been thinking for a while now that her ability to quickly learn a new slope may be to her advantage: She is at her core a specialist in slalom and giant slalom, disciplines that typically do not have pre-race training with gates set on the course. That often requires racers to arrive in the morning, examine the piste and the gates and have at it. In contrast, speed specialists usually excel by getting to know the same slopes year after year, and learning the best paths through the twists and rolls of the different tracks.

That does not lessen the pressure of the Olympics races, though. Before Shiffrins first Games in 2014, she said, she did not understand the gravity of what winning an Olympic medal could mean. Then she won and got a big taste of it, and it was on her mind perhaps a bit too much going into Pyeongchang in 2018.

Control what you can control, Shiffrin said. Just try not to get too disappointed about the rest.

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The Best Skiers Dont Always Win at the Olympics. Here's Why - The New York Times

BEIJING China did not move mountains to host the 2022 Winter Olympics. But it flooded a dried riverbed, diverted water from a key reservoir that supplies Beijing and resettled hundreds of farmers and their families, all to feed one of the most extensive snow-making operations in the history of the Games.

This is what happens when the International Olympic Committee decides to bring the Winter Games to a place almost completely lacking in one of the main ingredients for winter sports: snow. Whats more, Beijing and its nearby mountains did not have that much water to make the artificial kind, either.

Machine-made snow has played a major role in winter sports for decades, even in snowier places like Norway, Switzerland and Colorado. In Beijings version of the Winter Games, the competitions that begin this weekend will for the first time take place almost entirely on artificial snow, necessitating an Olympic snow-making and water-management operation of enormous scale, and foreshadowing the reality of snow sports everywhere as the planet warms.

On the mountains where the Alpine competitions take place, which do not have any recreational skiing, narrow strips of white, visible from miles away, now cut through the brown mountains.

Beijing officials insist that snow production for the Games will not strain local water supplies, which have struggled to keep pace with the citys demands. But Chinas herculean investments in snow making are part of larger efforts to turn the arid mountains near Beijing into a permanent ski and snowboard hub, a project that could face challenges as climate change upends patterns of rainfall and drought.

Worldwide, the environmentally unfriendly secret of skiing and snowboarding competitions is that, as natural snow becomes less reliable, they almost always take place on the artificial kind. As the planet continues to heat up, machine-made snow will play an ever-larger role in guaranteeing a consistent, high-caliber field of play.

You could not have winter sports now without man-made snow, said Michael Mayr, the Asia manager of TechnoAlpin, the Italian company in charge of snow-making for the Beijing Games and at six previous Winter Olympics.

What sets Beijing apart from many of those past venues are its tight supplies of water, whether for snow making or for anything else. Over the past few decades, rapid development has sapped Beijings groundwater. July and August often bring heavy rains, but the city and nearby mountains get only sprinkles of precipitation in the winter: less than 2.5 inches per season on average in recent decades, according to data from a weather station near the Olympic venues.

In 2017, the last year for which international figures are available, Beijing had only about as much freshwater resources per resident 36,000 gallons as the western African nation of Niger, at the edge of the Sahara. Zhangjiakou, the city 100 miles northwest of the capital that will host some skiing and snowboarding events, had 83,000 gallons per resident, comparable to Djibouti in the Horn of Africa.

The United States, by contrast, had 2.3 million gallons per person. Countries with less than 260,000 gallons of freshwater resources per person are considered water-scarce.

Florian Hajzeri, who has been in China for four years overseeing the snow-making project for TechnoAlpin, said he realized the magnitude of his task as soon as he saw the landscape of the Olympic competition areas.

There are trees and vegetation, but it is not like an Alpine forest: It is vegetation for a drier climate, he said. It snows, but it is not enough for the competitions.

Before TechnoAlpin could install pumps and build more than 40 miles of pipe, at a cost of nearly $60 million, Chinese officials first had to figure out how to deliver enough water to the mountains.

How much water? Roughly one million cubic meters, according to TechnoAlpin, enough to fill 400 Olympic-size swimming pools. And that is just to start the Games. More snow, and more water, will likely be needed as the competitions take place.

To gather it all, Chinese authorities have built pumping stations to carry water from reservoirs miles away.

According to a state-run newspaper, Beijing has diverted water from the citys Baihebao Reservoir to the Guishui River, which flows near the Olympic zone but had long been mostly dried up in winter. Previously, Baihebao had primarily supplied the Miyun Reservoir, one of the largest stores of clean water for Beijing households.

Officials in Zhangjiakou which is pronounced sort of like jong jah coe have turned off irrigation across tens of thousands of acres to conserve groundwater, and resettled farmers who were living in what is now the Olympic competition area in high-rise apartments.

Modern China is no stranger to monumental water projects. Its biggest effort to ease Beijings water troubles began well before the Olympics: a colossal series of waterways that is transferring trillions of gallons of water a year from the nations humid south to its thirsty north. Hundreds of thousands of villagers were relocated to make way for the canals. Water from the project accounted for a sixth of Beijings water supply in 2020.

While the Chinese government has made progress on water issues in recent years, scientists and environmentalists say the capital cannot afford to rest on its laurels.

They still have to do more on water conservation, increasing water-use efficiency and ensuring social equity in water allocation, said Ximing Cai, a professor of water resources engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. If the Olympics spur a burst of economic development in the hills near Beijing, he said, the water use associated with that should be planned with caution.

But climate change could both deepen northern Chinas need for water and affect southern Chinas ability to provide it. Scientists have found that recent severe heat waves and floods in China were much more likely to occur because of human-caused climate change.

Under the backdrop of global warming, the risks to major infrastructure projects in China are increasing, Zheng Guoguang, then the countrys top weather official, told a Communist Party journal in 2015, citing the South-North transfer project among others.

Chinese officials say they are limiting the impact of snow-making, particularly because the snow that is made will be collected after it melts so it can be reused.

But scientists who study snow-making have found that a portion of the water evaporates after it is blasted out of a cannon but before it can crystallize into a flake. Some of the flakes are blown away by wind. Some droplets do not fully freeze and end up draining into the ground.

Two researchers in Switzerland, Thomas Grnewald and Fabian Wolfsperger, conducted experiments at a ski resort near Davos and found that as much as 35 percent of the water used for snow making was lost in these ways. (Water that seeps into the ground is not gone completely, of course. It helps replenish groundwater.)

Still, Wolfsperger said, Its definitely not environmentally friendly to build a ski hub near a water-scarce place like Beijing. But winter sports have never been that in general.

Other research has found that artificial ski runs can erode the soil and degrade vegetation, regardless of the kind of snow they use.

For skiers and snowboarders, competing entirely on machine-made snow changes everything about how they prepare for the Olympics, the biggest event of most of their lives, from the wax they use to increase speed, to training for the heightened risk of a slicker surface. In warmer weather, man-made snow surfaces tend to break down more quickly than those made of natural snow, athletes said.

This is not the first time we have been racing on artificial snow, and unfortunately it does not seem like its going to be the last, said Jessie Diggins, a gold medalist in cross-country in 2018 who has become a climate change activist in recent years.

Its harder and icier and transforms differently with different weather, she said. And because it is faster, some of the downhills ski much faster when you are rolling in. It can make the course I dont want to say dangerous but more tricky in terms of figuring out how you are going to navigate corners.

Under certain conditions, though, such as the very cold temperatures expected in China, Alpine skiers sometimes prefer artificial snow, because technicians can produce wet flakes that freeze into the kind of smooth, rock-hard surface they prefer.

It is more dense, said Travis Ganong, an American who specializes in speed events. It doesnt really form flakes, and when it is groomed it gets more packed. It just sits really well, and it becomes very uniform. Its actually how we like it.

Keith Bradsher contributed reporting.

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How Beijing Created Snow for the Winter Olympics - The New York Times

The Olympics have now earned their second pandemic gold medal, against the advice of many protesting the games this year. Despite the rising Omicron variant and the lack of IRL coverage, 109 events are taking place this year, more than any other winter season. After beginning the season on a slippery slope (literally, a camera was caught sliding down the ski slope), the Winter Olympics have returned to Beijing for their first stint with snowy games.

Where there are numerous competitions happening in the early mornings, there are roundups to accompany them. From Johnny Weirs Hunger Gamesesque outfits to the Jamaica bobsled teams return, the highs are as glamorous and cinematic as they can get in a global pandemic. There are also the lows of another sports competition during a variant spike, which makes rooting for your favorite snowboarder (or rainbow panda) not feel quite right. Regardless of how you feel, the Winter Olympics have slid into our TVs like a rogue camera, lost on a mountain in China.

This post will be updated as the Olympics continue.

HIGH: Kamila Valiyeva ushers in Womens Skatings quad era

Kamila Valiyeva became the first woman to land a quad (specifically a quadruple Salchow) at the beginning of her free skate. She is the first woman to land a quad at the Olympics. Part of Russias Quad Squad, she is building on the work of skaters that came before her like Surya Bonaly, who was the first woman to attempt a quad in competition at the 1990 European Championships. Quadruple jumps are still outlawed in Womens Skating short programs, but allowed during free skate.

LOW: Mikaela Shiffrins inauspicious Beijing debut

Defending Olympic champion Mikaela Shiffrin was disqualified on her first Beijing Olympics event, giant slalom. She slid and crashed on her side, missing a gate. Shiffrin, 26, is still trying to be come the first Apline skiier to win three Olympics golds, and she still has some chances at Beijing. Her next event is the slalom (regular size) on Wednesday, an event she won at Sochi.

HIGH: Russian Jesus Skater

Who has a crown of thorns, a love for one of the silliest musicals of all time, and a flair for the dramatic? Its Mark Kondratiuk, the 18-year-old Russian figure skater who free-styled to a Jesus Christ Superstar medley while dressed (of course) like Jesus himself. The performance, which you can watch in full below, even featured a figure-skating-interpretation of the flagellation of Christ, which is just as campy as it sounds.

LOW: Whatever Johnny Weir is wearing here.

Were not sure what to make of this.

HIGH: Rainbow Panda Mascot!!

The 2022 Winter Olympics mascot is a cute rainbow panda named Bing Dwen Dwen. Does he resemble a Masked Singer mascot? Yes. Is he slightly terrifying? Okay, maybe!! Nevertheless, this little guy is an adorable rainbow astronaut panda who should win every medal.

LOW: Someone Skated in a Joker Costume

And to the soundtrack of the film! When will we know peace

HIGH: The Yassification of Team USA

Skims, a.k.a. Kimberly Kardashians clothing line, sent Team USA a swag bag full of clothing so they can be winter baddies.

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Winter Olympics 2022: The Best and Worst Moments - Vulture

Therese Johaug of Norway after winning the 15-kilometer womens skiathlon cross-country race at the National Cross-Country Center in Zhangjiakou.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

Therese Johaug of Norway won the first gold medal of the Beijing Games on Saturday, dominating the 15-kilometer skiathlon after opening a commanding lead midway through the race that determines the worlds best all-around skier.

The 33-year-old Johaug, a 14-time world champion and three-time Olympic medalist, left the field behind after the first half of the race, which is skied half in the classical up-and-down skiing style and half in the less-regimented skating style.

The World Cup leader, Natalya Nepryayeva of Russia, held off Teresa Stadlober of Austria in a close battle for silver and bronze. Nepryayeva edged Stadlober, a surprise medalist, by three-tenths of a second, but both finished more than 30 seconds behind Johaug, whose winning time was 44 minutes 13.7 seconds.

The race was held in the frigid, blustery conditions of the Zhangjiakou National Cross Country Skiing Center, on a day so cold that dozens of skiers competed wearing hats and facemasks and tape on their cheeks to prevent windburn, a rarity in a sport that involves so much exertion.

The American Jessie Diggins, a hero of the 2018 Games after her dramatic closing leg delivered gold in the womens team sprint Theyve given it everything on the Klaebo bakken! finished sixth, nearly a minute behind Johaug.

A really promising start, said Diggins, whose specialty is the sprint races and who would have been a surprise medalist in a race that required so much classical skiing, her weaker style.

The frigid temperatures and gusty winds made for brutal racing conditions. Hailey Swirbul, another American, said one gust of wind nearly brought her to a complete stop.

The gold is Johaugs second in an Olympic race, joining a collection that includes a relay gold from the 2010 Vancouver Games and a silver and bronze from Sochi in 2014.

Russian Olympic Committee

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She missed the 2018 Pyeongchang Games, however, while serving a doping suspension for testing positive for a banned steroid in 2016. Johaug and Norwegian skiing officials blamed the result on a team doctors mistake, claiming he had accidentally given her the substance that was contained in a lip balm.

But the international ski federation pressed for a longer ban, and the Court of Arbitration for Sport agreed, extending her suspension to 18 months.

Diggins, the American star, had wanted to kick off the Olympics in grand style, but she couldnt match the power of Johaug and a clump of other European skiers during the classical first half of the race. Four years ago, Diggins and her former teammate Kikkan Randall became the first Americans to win gold in cross country, and the first Americans to win a cross-country medal since 1976.

Since that victory, Diggins has become one of the most feared skiers in the world, a wiry spark plug with seemingly limitless reserves of energy that force her competitors into submission and propel her to the finish when a race is on the line.

Skiathlon is a unique test, though, since it requires skiers to excel at both classical style skiing, in which the skis remain in a straight line, and freestyle, or skate skiing, a motion that is similar to ice skating.

Its an event that has always proven tough for American skiers, most of whom grow up skiing freestyle and then learn how to ski classical when they get older and begin to compete. European skiers are far more likely to have been introduced to classical style skiing at a young age.

Diggins has spent countless hours during the past four years trying to improve her performance in classical. The efforts helped lead to her becoming the first American woman to win the prestigious Tour de Ski in 2021, a multidisciplinary, eight-stage race that takes place in three venues in multiple countries over 10 days.

She will have several more chances to medal in Beijing, especially in the individual sprint, scheduled for Tuesday.

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Olympics Highlights: China Wins Its First Medal at the Beijing Games - The New York Times

A fiasco with COVID-19 testing left American speedskater Casey Dawson unable to compete in the 5,000 meter event at the Winter Olympics -- and stuck stateside -- but he was determined to participate in his first Olympic Games no matter what and no matter how late he arrived.

On Sunday, Dawson began a journey halfway around the world, in hopes of arriving in China just hours before the 1,500 meter race on Tuesday.

The 21-year-old tested positive for the virus about three weeks ago, but was under the impression he would be able to make the trek if he produced two consecutive negative tests. He was then informed he needed four consecutive tests from approved testing sites.

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Dawson was unable to get cleared in time to be there for his first race, but the Team USA athlete refused to miss out on the opportunity. After getting his fourth negative test on Saturday night, Dawson left Salt Lake City on Sunday morning for a flight to Atlanta. He then hopped on a red-eye to Paris and will then get on another red-eye to Beijing.

If globetrotting was an Olympic sport, Dawson would most certainly get the gold medal.

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Winter Olympics 2022 -- Team USA's Casey Dawson will not be deterred on globe-crossing journey to Beijing - ESPN