Concerns and controversies at the 2022 Winter Olympics
[28][29][30][31] In November 2021 the disappearance of former Olympian Peng Shuai after she made allegations of sexual assault against Zhang Gaoli, former Vice Premier of China and a high ranking Chinese Communist Party (CCP) member, has put pressure on the International Olympic Committee.
[38] On 23 June 2021 (Olympic Day), multiple Tibetan, Uyghur, Hongkonger, Chinese, Taiwanese and Southern Mongolian representatives staged protests in 50 cities worldwide, calling for a mass boycott.
[45] In March 2021, Senator Mitt Romney called for an "economic and diplomatic boycott" of the 2022 Winter Olympics, in which U.S. athletes would still participate, but no American spectators or dignitaries would attend.
He stated that it was "human rights abuses," referencing the ongoing genocide of Uyghur Muslims in China's Xinjiang region, as well as "many other issues that Australia has consistently raised".
[65][66] On 19 November 2021, 17 members of the Lithuanian national parliament Seimas released an official letter encouraging Lithuania to withdraw from the 2022 Olympics due human rights violations in China.
[38] However, during the opening ceremony, IOC president, Thomas Bach had called for the end of various types of discrimination during his speech indirectly referring to the human rights abuses in China.
Team officials from delegations including Belgium, Germany and the Russian Olympic Committee have all brought up issues facing their athletes in quarantine hotels, among them no internet, low-quality food, insufficient facilities and no training equipment.
[84][85] Meanwhile, Finnish men's ice hockey team's coach Jukka Jalonen accused China of not respecting the human rights of athlete Marko Anttila, who had not received food and was under a lot of stress while in quarantine.
[90] Moreover, Dirk Schimmelpfennig, Germany's chef de mission called the hotel accommodations provided for Olympic gold medalist in Nordic Combined Eric Frenzel as "unreasonable".
On 24 February 2022, 4 days after the Games finished, Russian President Vladimir Putin commenced a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, resulting in sporting sanctions against Russia.
[118][119] Al-Jazeera reported that "China's energy crisis is partially of its own making as President Xi Jinping tries to ensure blue skies at the Winter Olympics in Beijing next February and show the international community he's serious about de-carbonizing the economy.
[125] Critics say that the 2022 Winter Olympics is being used by the Chinese government for the purpose of sportswashing, a practice by which a country uses sporting events to distract from human rights abuses or other issues.
[127] According to Amnesty International, Swedish Olympic champion Nils van der Poel gave his Beijing 2022 gold medal to the daughter of a Hong Kong dissident "to protest the Chinese Government's devastating human rights record".
[132] Activists representing Chinese dissidents and the minority Uyghur and Tibetan populations encouraged athletes, sponsors, and other international participants in the games to use the platform to speak out on human rights.
The list of words included the names of Chinese leaders and government agencies, as well as references to the 1989 killing of pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square, and the religious group Falun Gong.
Several media figures, including Han Song from the state-controlled Xinhua News Agency argued that people should be more concerned about the incident than the Winter Olympics.
The cybersecurity group Citizen Lab, a research institute at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, warned that the My2022 app fails to provide encryption on many of its files, and has security weaknesses that leave users exposed to data breaches.
A new iOS version of MY2022 was released on 6 January 2022, which failed to fix these problems, while adding a new "Green Health Code", feature that collects more medical data and also lacks SSL certificate validation making it vulnerable to attacks.
For the final torch lighting, the Olympic flame was placed inside a giant snowflake in the "Bird's Nest" National Stadium by two athletes, Uyghur cross-country skier Dinigeer Yilamujiang from Xinjiang and Nordic combined competitor Zhao Jiawen.
[172] Kamaltürk Yalqun, a torchbearer in the 2008 Olympics of Uyghur descent, supported a full boycott of the 2022 games and heavily criticized the Chinese government's treatment of his people.
Following Sochowicz's injury, the International Luge Federation announced additional safety measures such as setting up "blockades at a start height" and installing a screen where lanes merge "to identify the exact position of the switch/barrier".
[178][179] In early 2022, Huang Yu-Ting garnered much controversy after a video that she posted on 23 January, went viral of her wearing an outfit labeled "China" during practice, and she was later criticised heavily by Taiwanese netizens, especially those with pan-green political views, who had flooded her Facebook and Instagram account with hate comments.
[189][190] According to the officials at the event, jumpsuits had to fit tight enough to not yield the advantage over air, which was part of the newly updated International Ski Federation (FIS) regulations.
Parrot, acknowledged the error and still felt like he deserved the gold medal, "But in the end, it's a judged sport and the fact is I had the most technical run of the day on pretty much every feature".
[202] Public outrage was sparked by the controversially low judgment of Japanese snowboarder Ayumu Hirano's second run scoring which had made commentators and fans cry "foul" on the judges.
[203] Hirano then had to repeat the exceptional performance in his third run, and successfully landing the very "dangerous" triple cork again, this time under greater public scrutiny of the judges, and moving from second place to winning the gold medal.
[204][205] In the men's 500 metres speed skating event, a false start was called in the last two heats, one of which included current World Cup champion Laurent Dubreuil.
[210] Several media outlets reported on Wednesday that the issue was over a positive test, held in December 2021, for trimetazidine by the ROC's Kamila Valieva,[211][212] which was officially confirmed on February 11.
Tygart further stated that as a minor Valieva could still be either fully exculpated or given a warning concerning her testing positive depending on the extent of findings in the on-going RUSADA investigation of doping.
On 30 January 2024, the ISU reallocated medals, upgrading the United States to gold and Japan to silver while downgrading ROC to bronze, but this decision has not yet been ratified by the IOC.
