Daily Archives: January 29, 2022

Hed traded his 10-year residency at Burning Man for the hermetic existence of an Olympic athlete, his all-nighters in Ibiza for goggles and a facemask in the open air. And still Benjamin Alexander could not escape the damn virus. Hed traced an initial bout with Covid-19 this time last year to a chairlift, en route to becoming the Cool Runnings of the slopes after learning to ski at age 32, Alexander will represent Jamaica next month as its first-ever alpine racer at the Winter Olympics. Hed been double-vaccinated, then boosted in November.

Late last month, though, the chalet scene at a qualifying event in Montenegro broke on through. By the time he arrived home for Christmas in London, Alexander had a sore throat, and the aches werent from his familys spare bed. Of course hed tested positive again; this is the Omicron Olympics hes bracing for.

Benjamin Alexander

Stephen Shelesky*

I would love to say that I was in like a big party or an orgy it was just training with a bunch of athletes half my age, Alexander, now 38, tells Rolling Stone following a post-quarantine run in Austria. Through a gallows smile of gritted teeth, he equates contagion to competitive advantage: I now have the immunity to go around licking door knobs when I get to the Olympics if need be. But, look thats gonna give me that sense of security and peace of mind now going into the Games, because a lot of people a lot of athletes are really, really scared of getting the virus.

The International Olympic Committee, organizers in Beijing, and the $2 billion global advertising machine swear that everything is going to be just fine this February: A filtering process of travelers into Chinas draconian zero-Covid environment, followed by daily testing within a closed loop and country-specific precautions, will combine to create a triple-bubble of the 24th Winter Olympiad pandemic-proofing that would give Joe Rogan nightmares and put the efforts of the NBA, NFL, and NHL to shame.

But listen to actual Olympians, as Rolling Stone did in real talk with a cross-section of 17 prominent athletes this month, and you begin to comprehend a mutating pressure. After lifetimes preparing for their moment, the Omicron variant is following these young people around the world, straight into a maze of naked capitalism of germs and depression and greed that expects blind faith. As potential cracks in the Chinese crackdown emerge, competitors at the Beijing Games will be expected to grin and bear it for the NBC cameras while dreading that one positive test that could wipe them out from competition and land them in a medical prison run by the state.

China has made their decision, and theyre gonna steamroll this thing.

Once you get Covid, youre done you cant race, you cant do anything, and theres, like, no point in wasting four years, the 21-year-old American speed-skater Maame Biney tells RS. It would really, really suck if they were just like, a week before: Oh, hey! Just kidding! The Olympics are not happening this year. Theyll happen next year. That would just be actually devastating.

More than 175 cases have already surfaced from delegations arriving in China, including at least one snowboarder on Friday, with mounting concern that a wave of athletes could become infected next. Multiple Olympic executives acknowledge to Rolling Stone that on-the-ground organizers and national medical experts have internally discussed the contingency plan of a pause in the action, as the NHL did to take a look in the mirror when Omicron hit the United States in December and the league barred its players from Beijing.

At this point, anything could happen, and its such a weird headspace to be in, not being confident going in that this is whats gonna happen, the three-time gold medalist snowboarder Shaun White told Rolling Stone in an extended interview this month. Theyve easily canceled plenty of things. They could easily turn around and go, Hey, its too much. Everybodys testing positive, and were not doing it.

But the IOCs adaptive response to the variant with a patchwork of policies, seen through the eyes of the athletes surviving Beijings Omicron gauntlet in the spotlight, make it increasingly clear: Whenever the suits who run the Olympics see through the looking glass of our upside-down pandemic world, they determine that the games must go on, at any cost.

China has made their decision, and theyre gonna steamroll this thing if youre sending an athlete or not, they dont give a shit, says Apolo Ohno, the most decorated American Olympian at the Winter Games, in an interview with Rolling Stone. Theyre not gonna cancel the Games. Theyre gonna blanket this virus as much as possible to control every aspect that they can.

After the American delegation trickled into Los Angeles to quarantine, test, and train, Team USAs star-studded Delta charter flight took off this Thursday one or two isolated bobsleddersand a couple of curlers short.

Tabitha Peterson, the world-champion curler whose day job involves putting nasal swabs and vaccine jabs into Minnesotans as a pharmacist at CVS, has witnessed the Omicron threat firsthand. If the Olympics were taking place in October last year, when cases were super-low, I would say wed probably be pretty good, Peterson tells RS. We even threw out there: Should we be DRIVING to California, so we have one less flight? But, my god, that sounds awful, too.

Tabitha Peterson of the United States reacts after delivering a stone during Game 2 of the US Olympic Team Trials at Baxter Arena on November 20, 2021 in Omaha, Nebraska.

Stacy Revere/Getty Images

Without any elite circling clubs to train in Southern California, some of Americas top curlers were forced to fly commercial from Minneapolis-St. Paul to L.A., from L.A. to Tokyo, and Tokyo into the main arrival hall of Beijing International Airport. Athletes from smaller delegations who cant afford first-class tickets direct to China, meanwhile, planned to buy seats together, hop-scotch across Asia, and hope for the best.

Charlotte Kalla, a three-time gold medalist in cross-country skiing, woke up at dawn to beat the crowd at her public gym, only to criss-cross Sweden from Sundsvall to stersund with her 70-page Olympic protocol playbook pulled up on her phone its kind of like homework, she tells RS then join the Swedish cohort in Munich and take a charter to Beijing. (Good thing she didnt swing through Italy, where her Norwegian rivals are holed up after two positive tests this week; a member of the Brazilian cross-country team, traveling through Italy while awaiting a negative result to enter China, suffered major injuries in a car crash on Thursday and will miss the Games.)

The Australian freestyle skier Matt Graham, meanwhile, had made his way from a broken collarbone in Sweden, to Brisbane for a ramp-up, then home to Sydney. Hes since flown up to Finland to meet his teammates for a week back on the mountain, before hopping aboard the Team Australia flight to China on Wednesday. The Aussie contingent has been encouraged to avoid airplane food, so Graham likes to pull out his pre-packed bowl of spaghetti once everyone else onboard has stopped eating and put their masks back on. In some ways, Graham says, just getting to Beijing is gonna be quite rewarding in itself.

For all the lessons of the post-vaccine, post-spike Tokyo Games last summer, touchdown at the host countrys airport remains the incubation obstacle that most concerns Olympic officials. Were not going to swab at 30,000 feet, says Dr. Michael Wilkinson, the chief medical officer for Team Canada. But we also dont know how many other planes will be arriving at the same time. IOC advance-team officials who landed early at the dedicated Olympic terminal have told him to expect slightly less limbo than the eight-hour waits reported by athletes to make it through customs and receive a nasal-swab result in Tokyo. But five members of the Canadian traveling party have already tested positive in Beijing.

In some ways, says one athlete, just getting to Beijing is gonna be quite rewarding in itself.

As touchdown began in earnest this week, athletes were getting tested en masse at Beijing International. (Its the PCR throat swab this time.) To avoid needless interaction, theyre carrying their own suitcases. (Yes, even Shaun White.) Theyve been shown to their seats on socially-distanced buses run by the Chinese organizing committee. (Bus and taxi drivers are trapped inside the bubble, too.) And then theyre off through the processing center to wait up to six hours for test results inside the closed loop a pandemic purgatory of isolation, action sports, and a nebulous nether region reserved for quarantine.

Its pretty incredible that the Olympics is willing to risk and take on this, and try to put all these hoops and hurdles in place so that people are safe, White tells RS. And the vaccination, thats all part of it, obviously, is trying to keep people safe.

Full vaccination is all but mandated to enter this Olympic thunderdome; unvaxxed athletes and staff were required to complete a three-week quarantine upon arrival in Beijing. Despite the monastic effort of one Swedish gold-medal snowboarder who spoke to Rolling Stone from a Chinese Holiday Inn Express last week, and a Russian plot to exempt their teenage figure-skaters, the rule does not leave much realistic space for preparation. Twenty-one days is a lot of pause in training, alpine racer Max Gordeyev tells RS from Kyrgyzstan, one of the least vaccinated countries on Earth. There is no time to wait.

But thats a lot of what life in Beijings sprawling campus of athlete housing and dining halls is going to feel like: a lot of waiting around. Ilkka Herola, a Finnish nordic combined skier, admits that hes worried about getting bored. Hes also in the band Zen and Tonic, which skews toward rock, with the occasional country twang. I think I will bring my traveling guitar there, because its a great way to confine, especially when we are quite alone in our rooms, he says. But any song I write would be a quite lonely and sad song.

Short track speedskater Maame Biney smiles before boarding a plane en route to the Beijing Olympics at a Delta Airlines terminal Thursday, Jan. 27, 2022, in Los Angeles.

Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP Images

As the first Black womens speed-skater on the U.S. Olympic team, Maame Biney is already a regular in the hype cycle of NBC Sports. Her fierce alter ego on the ice, Anna Digger, is to Biney as The Black Mamba was to Kobe Bryant a self-constructed edifice to hide the vulnerability beneath. For me, I worry a lot about things, and once I worry, I just get into this spiral and this huge hole, she tells Rolling Stone. Biney is re-binging Modern Family as her comfort-watch, and shell be clicking the sleep icon on her Headspace meditation app every night inside the Beijing bubble, to de-stress and to de-nervousness my head.

Get Biney thinking about her inspirations, though, like the mental-health champions Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka and then about her fears, like a super-spreader Olympic hotel or a mid-event quarantine and shell tell you about her real imaginary friend: Its a whole, like, what-if thing. Im basically a fortune-teller. So when I get into my fortune-teller mode, theres really, like, no way out of it until the actual situation happens.

IOC officials and national medical officers describe the actual daily routine at the Omicron Olympics as something like this: An athlete wakes up and finds coffee and a collection site for daily testing in the drab lobby of her apartment building in one of three Olympic villages, sub-divided by sport and then by delegation. She can find a window for socially-distanced leg presses, so long as the Canadian sanitation consultants arent busy measuring the sweat contamination on the machines, then spraying down the entire gym with their antimicrobial, electro-static shield.

The American bobsledders have been eating lunch with rubber gloves for months, and Team USAs endurance biathletes are Purell addicts whove always avoided the common cold like the plague; members of both were happy to hear that the dining-hall dividers in the 2022 villages are at least see-through. They might not be so happy to smell the leaning tower of Olympic rubbish, which Beijing organizers will keep stored within the bubble during the Games to protect the health and safety of the Chinese people, before mass-processing the garbage in what could amount to a literal dumpster fire.

There will, eventually, be actual competition itself, once Olympians venture to the transport mall shuttling them out into the rest of the closed loop, which Rolling Stone has learned will allow 30,000 people and counting. Bike-shares are out and commuter rail is in, so long as youre cool with the locals peering through the window of the next car over its the closest theyll get to the action, since these Games are restricted to all but Chinese fans in faraway spectator areas designated at each venue. Last week, in response to the first Omicron case breaking through to Beijing, Olympic organizers cut off ticket sales to limit attendance for a selected group of onlookers and conducted mass testing across major swaths of the city, anal swabbing included.

All the partying will be afterwards. Until then, were trying not to test positive.

Even at the events, two-thirds of which will be played outdoors, some athletes admit to Rolling Stone that they would compete in masks if it avoided a break in the action. Alas, there will be masks on the medal stand, as there were in Tokyo. Its impossible, 19-year-old Richardson Viano, who will represent Haiti on the mountain in the giant slalom, tells RS. We speak more about Covid and procedures than we ski.

The Omicron athlete, so long as they are of legal age, can always wind down with some KFC and a drink, although alcohol is more widely available at the alternative hotel accommodations reserved for the more lucratively sponsored class of athletes.

Chinese organizers confirmed to Rolling Stone that one important safety item would continue to be distributed throughout the Olympic villages this year: condoms. As Alexander, the DJ turned one-man Jamaican ski team, explained, Ive spoken to a lot of previous Olympians, and one of them whos had the experience of six Winter Games said to me, quite honestly: The Olympics is nothing other than a fuckfest.

Guillaume Cizeron, Frances reigning silver medalist in ice dancing, isnt so sure. Yeah, I dont think they need to do that anymore, although you never know, he jokes over the phone with RS from self-quarantine in Montreal. All the partying will be afterwards. Until then, were trying not to test positive.

The sisterhood of the traveling luggage was not impressed. The International Luge Federation had chartered a Russian airliner to Novembers training camp in Beijing that was delayed from Frankfurt and too small by half, what with all the sleds, which meant social distancing became a pile-up of snow gear and strangers. Only three people were sitting in their correct seats, Julia Taubitz, a 25-year-old luger from Germany, tells Rolling Stone. The remaining seats were occupied by suitcases. And one person had Covid.

Despite their protestations to the Chinese health authorities, 12 German racers were identified as close contacts. Even after two years of vigilance and interruption, these world-class lugers became a test-case preview of the second-class citizenry that is quarantine inside Beijings closed loop: The asymptomatic still got steered 30 minutes outside the villages to Chinese hotels, where testing was required at five in the morning and 11 at night, Taubitz says, with only a half-hour allowed for training from 8:30 to 9 p.m. and without Chinese first-aid workers allowed to touch the foreign athletes. When the Germans returned to their rooms, she recalls, the food was put in front of our door, in plastic bags and mostly cold. Icky shrimp. Potatoes. Soup, if you could call it that. And dont even think about asking for something vegan.

Food served to athletes in quarantine during a pre-Olympic training camp.Food served to athletes in quarantine during a pre-Olympic training camp.

Courtesy of Julia Taubitz

Germanys Natalie Geisenberger, the four-time Olympic gold medalist recognized as one of the best female lugers ever, threatened never to return for the Beijing Games if the isolation conditions remained. They are three- to four-star hotels, the IOCs operational coronavirus czar Pierre Ducrey tells RS. We have visited them and there has been a formal process to ensure that the accommodation is up to standard. They are decent hotels with good services.

More than 600,000 Covid tests were administered at the Tokyo Games, with 430 positive results but only 29 from athletes and five of those were Greek synchronized swimmers. Through Friday, according to a Rolling Stone analysis of data from Beijing officials, 595,438 tests (5,417 of them for competitors) revealed 177 confirmed positive cases since Jan. 4, 118 of them at the airport; at least one but as many as 22 could be for an athlete, after 19 competitors or team personnel tested positive on Friday alone.Its not so much if were going to have cases were going to have cases, thats a given, Ducrey says. If you look at the prevalence of Omicron right now, its impossible that people dont come in and bring Covid. But our ability to block them before they take the flight, at the arrival, or afterwards will demonstrate that were able to deal with this successfully.

Omicron turns up the attention on any voluminous testing effort: The NBA had 237 of its more than 500 players test positive in December, leading to 11 postponed games not that youd hear much about the whole global-pandemic thing during the rescheduled games on ESPN and TNT. Now, with a 24/7 TV guide to fill from Beijing, the IOC and its broadcast partners simply wont tolerate a break in the action. NBCs announcers will be doing play-by-play from the relative safety of a Connecticut studio, and a diplomatic boycott has its ad-sales team working overtime, but the lugers still gotta luge for that $1.2-million-a-minute primetime airtime a lead-in to the networks broadcast of a Super Bowl that falls smackdab in the middle of the Games.

Bob Costas, who was the face of the Olympics for NBC from 1988 to 2016, says that the network was dealt a bad hand between Omicron and probably the number-one human-rights violator on the planet but that executives have a responsibility to make sure Covid doesnt magically vanish on-screen. All of this hangs over the entire Olympics, Costas tells Rolling Stone. Its an elephant in every room. So its difficult to ignore. But in fairness to them and their investment, if you dwell on it too much, basically youre telling people, This sucks.

But stuff could rear its head a prominent athlete could be tossed or unable to compete, and that has to be acknowledged, continued Costas, who now hosts HBOs Back on the Record. You could have a young, uber-fit athlete completely asymptomatic test positive in an unfortunate timeframe for him or her. You miss a handful of games in the sports that we follow, but here you miss the whole thing that you trained years and years for. That could happen.

After testing positive, athletes can return from their three-star isolation paradise once they return two negative PCR tests, 24 hours apart. If their swabs keep showing up positive but theyre not sick, a medical review panel may intervene. During that window, however, entire careers can evaporate from a single bus-driver breakthrough.

It has been my dream since childhood to compete for my country at the Olympic Games, says Taubitz, the luger with the lousy soup. And now the anticipation is taken away because you always have the fear of testing positive in the back of your mind. Indeed, two of her teammates already did.

Our job as athletes is to make people dream. Hopefully people will get to maybe forget a little bit about the wholepandemic thing [during] the Olympics.

And that languishing is merely for the asymptomatic. Come down with a fever and chest pains to go with your perfect fitness, and youre headed to a Chinese-run hospital half-an-hour from the villages. You will not be going anywhere outdoors again until your temperature stabilizes for three days and the MRI of your lungs starts to look better. IOC officials do not anticipate such elite athletes to take up infirmary bedspace, and, sure, hospital workers will help lug in some free weights if athletes ask nicely. But national medical officers tell Rolling Stone they had to negotiate with Beijing for access to visit athletes if they end up in the three quarantine hospitals let alone bring them an iPhone charger to contact the outside world.

If I would be one of the unlucky people stuck in the medical prison, I did do a 10-day silent meditation retreat where youre not allowed to look anyone in the eyes or have any real human contact, deadpans Alexander. So I have a little bit of solitary-confinement training in case I need it when I get there.

Cizeron, the French ice dancer, skipped this months European Figure Skating Championships to avoid getting stuck in Estonia with Omicron. Informed by RS of the Olympic loops Chinese Covid hospital, he says, Estonia would be better!

Obviously its every athletes nightmare to just not be able to compete, Cizeron goes on. But our job as athletes is to make people dream. Hopefully people will get to maybe forget a little bit about the whole, you know, pandemic thing and just dream in front of their screens for the time of the Olympics.

The skeleton competition falls in the middle of that three-week window, meaning the American favorite Megan Henry wont even be sticking around for her first closing ceremonies. They want you to get out immediately, she tells RS. If Henry were to come down with symptoms, of course, Im concerned about being stuck in China and not being able to leave for 30-plus days its like trying not to get bit by a mosquito.

At final preparation meetings earlier this month, the IOC briefed national committees and athlete representatives on how much had been and would not possibly be changing as a result of Omicron. The NHL took a pause instead of sending its players to Beijing, but that doesnt mean a curling cluster will put the breaks on the Games. It doesnt matter if youre curling, ice hockey, or figure skating the reality is the scheme is made to avoid the possibility to create contagion, says Ducrey of the IOC. We have to be always imagining that the worst can happen. This is really ad hoc.

Matt Carroll, the CEO of the Australian Olympic Committee, has been inside the IOC boardrooms and always leaves them convinced that the Chinese will move heaven and Earth to avoid a Covid-induced avalanche. At the final major executive meeting before athletes began their sojourn toward Beijing, concerns were given a full airing. Literally: The medical prison is now officially required to provide access to an open window. And, yes, quarantine room service will offer a halfway decent vegan spread.

Bluntly, its gonna be a shitshow for anyone in the space, so you make it the best you possibly can and work within the confines, Carroll tells Rolling Stone. The alternative is what? The games dont go ahead? Nobody wants that.

See the original post here:

The Omicron Olympics: Behind the Scenes of a Covid Stshow China Doesnt Want You to See - Rolling Stone

2022 Olympics: COVID concerns will make winter games look different

The Winter Olympics will look different this year with strict COVID-19 guidelines in place as China battles an omicron outbreak.

Just the FAQs, USA TODAY

Free condoms will be availableat the 2022 Winter Beijing Olympics, although organizers want athletes to walk a tight rope when interacting with others and avoid hugs and handshakes in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"All Olympic-related units will provide appropriate quantities of condoms for free at the appropriate time to people who've checked in to stay inside the loop,"organizers told Reuters via email.

According to the Olympics playbook, athletes are to minimize physical interactions and stay within the "closed loop" to curb the spread of the virus while competing.

The games are set tostart on Friday, and athletes from all over the world will compete in 15 differentsports until Feb. 20.

Team USA Olympic gear is here: Cheer on your favorite athletes with these patriotic pieces

'The biggest stage in sport': Team USA roster for 2022 Winter Olympics features second-largest number of women

Sex and mingling among the athletes have been notorious at the Olympic Village where athletes are housed.

"Theres a lot of sex going on," Hope Solo, the two-time gold medaling soccer player, told ESPN in 2012.

Organizerspassed out 450,000 condoms at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro as they sought to curb the spread of the Zika virus.At the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, organizers handed out 150,000 condoms but only as a parting gift.

There were also rumors the beds at the Tokyo Olympicswere "anti-sex" after some athletes claimed the cardboard material they were made of could only hold one person.

The rumor was debunked by organizers who said the beds could support 441 pounds of weight in a press release.

Condoms started being distributed at the Olympics in 1988 to raise awareness about HIV and AIDS.

Read the original post:

2022 Winter Olympics: Free condoms available, but hugs and handshakes are to be avoided - USA TODAY

US diplomatic boycott of China winter Olympics: Who goes, who doesn't

As a growing list of countries announce diplomatic boycotts of the 2022 Winter Olympics in China, USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour explains what it means for the upcoming Games.

Just the FAQs, USA TODAY

There will be no shortage of American star power at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.

After finishing fourth in the medal table at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Games with 23 medals, including nine golds, Team USA will look to improve on that mark with a diverse and accomplished group of athletes. The U.S. delegation in Beijing will feature several reigning Olympic medalists, recent world champions and up-and-coming starlets.

Here are 23 key names to know ahead of the 2022 Games, including some who have already become winter sports stars and others who are poised to join them in the coming weeks. The opening ceremony will be held Feb. 4.

NICE THREADS: 2022 Winter Olympics opening ceremony uniform unveiled

DOUBLE DUTY: NBC preparing for Super Bowl LVI, Winter Olympics

Jamie Anderson, women's snowboarding

Anderson isn't short on accolades. She's the most decorated slopestyle snowboarder in X Games history, the first woman to land a 1080 off a jump andthe only person to win an Olympic gold medal in the brief history of women's slopestyle. She's earned each of the past two.

Now, the 31-year-old will be returning to the Winter Games for a third time, with her eyeson a three-peat and a fourth overall medal. (Anderson also won silver in big air at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games.)

Kevin Bickner, men's ski jumping

It's been almost a century since the U.S. won its only Olympic medal in ski jumping, and that drought is likely to continue in Beijing.

That said, if there's one American to watch in the event, it's probably Kevin Bickner. The 25-year-old holds the national distance record of 802 feet, set in 2017. And he is coming off an 18th-place finish at the 2018 Gameswhich, while still a ways off the podium, marked the best finish for a U.S. man in the event since the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City.

TEXT WITH US: We'll share news and a behind-the-scenes look at the Beijing Olympics

NEWSLETTER: Subscribe for free to get daily Olympics news in your email inbox

Summer Britcher, women's luge

At 27, Britcher is already gearing up for what will be her third Olympic appearance. Though she didn't place higher than 15th individually in her first two trips, the Pennsylvania native has shown steady improvement over her career and seen better results of late, including a third-place finish in the 2018-19 World Cup standings.

Britcher has also been an important member of the relay team in recent years, helping the U.S. to a fourth-place finish in Pyeongchang and a bronze medal at the 2020 world championships.

Brittany Bowe, women's speedskating

A former inline skater and college basketball player, Bowe is now one of several U.S. speedskaters who figure to be medal threats in Beijing.

The 33-year-old won a bronze in Pyeongchang in team pursuit Team USA's only long track speedskating medal at those Games and she has been arguably the nation's most dominant skater in the years since. Bowe broke the world record at 1000 meters in 2019 and has won gold at that distance at two of the past three world championships. She also finished second at another distance, 1500 meters, at the most recent world championships last year.

Nathan Chen, men's figure skating

After a disappointing fifth-place finish at the 2018 Olympics, Chen has been nothing short of brilliant on the international level. He has won three consecutive world championships all by whopping margins and became the first U.S. man to three-peat since Scott Hamilton in the early 1980s. (Hamilton won four in a row.)

In addition to skating, Chen is also a student at Yale, where he is majoring in statistics and data science. He put his studies on pause to train for the Beijing Games butis likely to return to campus later this year with at least one individual Olympic medal perhaps gold.

Jessie Diggins, women's cross-country skiing

Diggins won a shocking gold medal at the 2018 Games in the team sprint event, alongside partner Kikkan Randall. It was thesecond Olympic medal ever won by U.S. cross-country skiers, following Bill Koch's silver in the 30K at the 1976 Innsbruck Games.

In the years since, Diggins, 30, becamethe first American to win the Tour de Ski a multi-stage event that is modeled off of cycling's Tour de France. In the niche world of cross-country skiing, shequickly has become America's brightest star.

Susan Dunklee, women's biathlon

Dunklee is in the midst of her final year as a biathlete, the end of a career that has spanned more than a decade and seen her achieve new milestones for Americans in the sport. Her silver medal at the 2017 world championships, for example, was the first-ever won by an American in biathlon the only longstanding sport at the Winter Olympics in which the United States has never won a medal.

Outside of biathlon, Dunklee has also been an advocate for sustainability and gender equity.

Alex Ferreira, men's freestyle skiing

In the brief Olympic history of ski halfpipe, onlyoneman has ever won a gold medal: American David Wise, who's done it twice. But this time around,itcould be Ferreira's turn to shine.

The 27-year-old Aspen, Colorado, native finished second to Wise in the halfpipe at the Pyeongchang Games andhas been on a tear in the lead-up to the Beijing Games, including wins at both Dew Tour and the U.S. Grand Prix Finals earlier this winter. There figures to be plenty of competition in this event in Beijing, especially among the Americans, but Ferreira will certainly be in the mix.

Taylor Fletcher, men's Nordic combined

Fletcher is one of the few four-time Olympians on Team USA, which is an achievement in and of itself. He won a bronze medal at the 2013 world championships and has long been one of the nation's stalwarts in Nordic combined, which consists of ski jumping and cross-country skiing. The event has long been dominated by Europeans including, unsurprisingly, Norway so Fletcher faces long odds of reaching the podium.

Alex Hall, men's freestyle skiing

Hall, 23, was born in Alaska, grew up in Switzerland, and won asilver medal in Norway at the 2016 Youth Olympic Games.

The reigning world bronze medalist in freeski slopestyle, he clinched his spot on Team USA in thrilling fashion at a Grand Prix event in January, landing a crazy run in his last attempt to winby less than a point. This will be his second consecutive Olympic appearance.He placed 16th in slopestyle in Pyeongchang.

Dusty Henricksen, men's snowboarding

From Shaun White to Red Gerard, it seems like there's always an up-and-coming American snowboarder who blossoms into a star at the Olympics. And at the Beijing Games, it could very well be Henricksen.

Just 18,Henricksen will be making his Olympic debut after claiming a pair of big victories in recent years. He won gold in slopestyle at the Youth Olympic Games in 2020, then followed up with a first-place finish at the Winter X Games in 2021, becoming the first American to win the event at the X Games since White in 2009.

Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue, ice dance

The U.S. is the only country to win an Olympic medal in ice dance at each of the past four Games. Hubbell and Donohue will be among those aiming to make it five.

Both are now north of 30 and have said this will be their final Olympic run, after more than a decade together. Hubbell and Donohue placed fourthat the 2018 Olympics, just a few points off the podium. But they've been in sharp form since, finishing third and secondat the most recent world championships.

Kaillie Humphries, women's bobsled

One of the most accomplished pilots in her sport, Humphries has won three medals in three Olympic appearances for Canadadating back to 2010. The Beijing Games will be her first with Team USA.

Humphries, 36,switched nationalities after filing a complaint against Canadian team officials in 2018, alleging verbal and emotional abuse. She became a U.S. citizen in December. With the Olympic debut of women's monobob, Humphries is favored to win at least one medal in Beijing, though there is a chance she could return home with two.

Chloe Kim, women's snowboarding

Kim was one of the breakout stars of the 2018 Olympics, where she won a gold medal at the age of 17. And she's heavily favored to become the first repeat winner in the women's halfpipe since its debut in 1998.

After taking a year off from competition in 2019-20to focus on her schoolwork at Princeton and to "be a normal kid for once"Kim has been as dominant as ever in her return to the halfpipe. The 21-year-old has racked up recent wins at the 2021 world championships and Dew Tour, among other marquee events.

Hilary Knight, women's hockey

More than 15 years after making her Team USA debut, Knight is back for afourth Olympic appearance and will be one of the veteran anchors for a team that will look to repeat atop the Olympic podium this winter.

At 32, she is one of the most recognizable athletes in her sport and still one of the most accomplished and dangerous attacking players on the ice. In 190 career games for Team USA, Knight has amassed 219 points, including 126 goals. She's also beenpart of eight world championship teams, on top of her Olympic successes.

Alysa Liu, women's figure skating

Liu, 16, had to withdraw from nationals this year after testing positive for COVID-19, but she successfully petitioned her way onto the Olympic team after a strong first season on the senior international circuit.

A two-time U.S. championand one of the few American women who can land a triple axel in competition,Liu probably has the best chance of any U.S. women of sneaking onto the podium, which the Russians are expected to sweep.

Jake Sanderson, men's hockey

The NHL's decision to pull out of the Beijing Olympics due to COVID-19 opened the door for younger players like Sanderson to step up.

The son of ex-NHL forward Geoff Sanderson, the 19-year-old currently plays collegiately at the University of North Dakota and was drafted fifth overall in 2020 by the Ottawa Senators. He has been a standout defenseman in the U.S. talent pipeline and captained the U.S. junior national team at its most recent world championships.

Kristen Santos, women's short track speedskating

Originally a figure skater, Santos switched to speedskating at 9 and won a pair of junior national championships. She barely missed out on the 2018 Olympic team, finishing fourth at thosetrials, where only the top three would be competing at the Games.

This time around, Santos left little doubt, sweeping the 1500-meter races at this season'strials to officially punch her ticket to Beijing, where she might represent Team USA's best shot at a medal in short track.

Mikaela Shiffrin, women's Alpine skiing

Shiffrin, 26, has quickly established herself as one of the most dominant American skiers ever and she is without question one of the brightest stars on Team USA.

With more than 70 World Cup wins and 11 world championship medals to her name, Shiffrin will enter her third Olympics with strong odds of winning medals in multiple eventsjust as she did in Pyeongchang, where she took gold in giant slalom and silver in Alpine combined. Shiffrin, who tested positive for COVID-19 just six weeks before the Games, has a stated goal of competing in all five individual events in Beijing.

John Shuster, men's curling

Four years after leading Team USA to an improbable gold in Pyeongchang, Shuster is back for his fifth Olympic appearance, once again as captain of the U.S. men's team.

Few U.S. winterathletes can match Shuster's longevity. The 39-year-old Minnesota native won his first national title in 2003, and competed at his first Olympics in 2006. He'll be joined in Beijing by two of the three teammates who competed alongside him in 2018, Matt Hamilton andJohn Landsteiner. Chris Plys replaces Tyler George to round out the team.

Jordan Stolz,men's speedskating

The 17-year-old Stolz has been touted as the future of U.S. men's speedskating, and he showed why at the Olympic trials in January. He won both the 500-meter and 1000-meter races at trials, breaking the 1000-meter track record set by two-time Olympic gold medalist Shani Davis in the process.

A Wisconsin native, Stolz will be the third-youngest American male speedskater to compete at the Games. But U.S. teammate Joey Mantia described him as the guy who's "going to carry that torch into the next several quads."

Katie Uhlaender, women's skeleton

Nearly two decades after her first competition,Uhlaender is still going. The Beijing Olympics will be her fifth, a rare achievement for U.S. winter sports athletes. The 37-year-old has come close to the Olympic podium, finishing fourth in Sochi in 2014 by four hundredths of a second, but she has yet to win a medal.

Contact Tom Schad at tschad@usatoday.com or on Twitter @Tom_Schad.

Go here to read the rest:

The 2022 Winter Olympics are near: Here's 23 Team USA athletes you need to know before you watch - USA TODAY

COVID-19 is already throwing a wrench into plans for Team USA, a week before the 2022 Winter Olympics begin.

Multiple members of the United States bobsled and skeleton team have tested positive for the virus, Yahoo Sports reported on Friday night.

Bobsledder Josh Williamson announced Wednesday in an Instagram post that he had tested positive for COVID-19 last Sunday, but he is reportedly not the only one. There is at least one other athlete, in addition to multiple coaches and support staff, who tested positive, according to Yahoo. A team official confirmed to the website that there were multiple positive tests but did not specify details.

Its all a nightmare, one athlete told Yahoo Sports.

Williamson said in his Instagram post that while he was not able to fly to Beijing with Team USA, there were later flights that he could get on once he returns multiple negative tests. The Olympics officially begin Friday but bobsled training runs dont begin until Feb. 10.

The team official told Yahoo that at this time, [the federation] still expect[s] everyone to go to Beijing. What could complicate matters is anyone who tested positive will need four straight days of negative PCR tests and a fifth-day buffer before they can depart for Beijing.

Team USA won the silver medal in two-woman bobsled in 2018. Elana Meyers Taylor, who won the silver with Lauren Gibbs, tweeted on Thursday that she had made it to Beijing and passed her first COVID-19 test.

Continued here:

US Olympic bobsled team already facing COVID-19 'nightmare' - New York Post

At the bottom of the slope where snowboarders will compete in the 2022 Beijing Olympics, an electronic sign cycles through ads for companies like Samsung and Audi. Coca-Colas cans are adorned with Olympic rings. Procter & Gamble has opened a beauty salon in the Olympic Village. Visa is the events official credit card.

President Biden and a handful of other Western leaders may have declared a diplomatic boycott of the Winter Games, which begin next week, but some of the worlds most famous brands will still be there.

The prominence of these multinational companies, many of them American, has taken the political sting out of the efforts by Mr. Biden and other leaders to punish China for its human rights abuses, including a campaign of repression in the western region of Xinjiang that the State Department has declared a genocide.

The Olympic sponsorship reflects the stark choice facing multinational companies working in the country: Jeopardize access to an increasingly sensitive China, or deal with the reputational risk associated with doing business there. When it comes to the Beijing Olympics, the decision has been clear.

While the sponsors have faced protests by human rights activists in several countries, they have largely brushed them aside, choosing instead to keep China, and its emerging class of nationalistic consumers, happy.

The companies argue that the Olympics are not political, and that they have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on deals that span multiple Games, not just Beijings. Collectively, the top 13 Olympic sponsors have contracts with the International Olympic Committee that add up to more than $1 billion.

They just seem to be proceeding as normal, said Mandie McKeown, executive director of the International Tibet Network, a group that helped to organize protests by more than 200 rights groups calling for a boycott of the Olympics. Its literally like theyve got their heads in the sand.

For companies, though, the risks of angering Chinese consumers by criticizing Chinas policies are high. Armies of patriotic voices on Chinese social media have furiously denounced foreign brands for perceived slights, vitriol often amplified by the government and official state media.

Adidas, Nike and other fashion companies faced nationwide boycotts in China after they expressed concerns about reports of forced labor in Xinjiang, the region where the Communist Party has forced millions of Uyghur Muslims into mass detention and re-education camps. When the fashion retailer H&M pledged to stop buying cotton from Xinjiang, a boycott by Chinese consumers cost it around $74 million in lost sales over one quarter.

Even one of the top Olympic sponsors, Intel, faced a backlash last month after the company posted a letter calling on international suppliers to avoid sourcing products from Xinjiang. In the face of the fury, Intel rewrote the letter within days to remove the reference to Xinjiang.

The space to please both sides has evaporated, said Jude Blanchette, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. When choosing who to upset, its either a bad week or two of press in the U.S. versus a very real and justified fear that youll lose market access in China.

Top sponsors have sidestepped questions, at times awkwardly, about whether their support effectively whitewashes the Communist Partys authoritarian rule. The Olympics, executives argue, should not be politicized, pointing to the Olympic Charter, which says as much, despite a long history of political intrigue surrounding the Games.

Only four major sponsors Omega, Intel, Airbnb and Procter & Gamble responded to requests for comment. Omega, the official timekeeper and data handler of the Olympic Games, said that since it started its partnership with the Olympic Games in 1932, it has been our policy not to get involved in certain political issues because it would not advance the cause of sport in which our commitment lies.

Airbnb and Procter & Gamble said they were focused on individual athletes and emphasized their commitment to each Olympics Games rather than Beijing, specifically. A representative at Intel said the company would continue to ensure that our global sourcing complies with applicable laws and regulations in the U.S. and in other jurisdictions where we operate.

Ski and sport have no business in politics, said Justin Downes, president of Axis Leisure Management, a hospitality company and contractor that is working with the Canadian Olympic Committee and others to help with logistics and supplies.

Almost all the Olympic sponsors have codes of ethics or a corporate social responsibility pledge to honor human rights, but these Games have tested how far they will go to speak out against widely recognized violations.

In China, those violations have included the crackdown in Xinjiang, as well as the continuing repression of Tibet, the erosion of political freedoms in Hong Kong and the threats to assert Chinas territorial claim over Taiwan.

Mr. Downes has signed contracts with Olympics venues to ensure that the people he employs do not raise politically sensitive topics. If any member of his staff, which includes medical responders, makes a political statement on subjects like Xinjiang, Mr. Downes could be liable, he said.

We are told not to disclose on certain topics or post pictures on social media, Mr. Downes said of the contracts. They dont want people showing up and making a statement. Its common sense.

Chinas critics say the sponsors have associated themselves with an event that could tarnish their brands. Some have compared these Games to the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, which Nazi Germany used to showcase Hitlers fascist regime.

We always repeated these words, Never again, said Tenzyn Zchbauer, an ethnic Tibetan who has joined protests in Germany against Allianz, the insurance and financial services giant that is also a top Olympic sponsor. At least genocide should be a red line, she added, referring to Chinas crackdown in Xinjiang.

For many international companies, however, the Winter Olympics are an opportunity to capture the attention of more than a billion consumers around the world, as well as inside Chinas huge consumer market.

Beyond the top sponsors, numerous international companies have promoted their products in Olympic-themed campaigns. In one shopping center in Beijing, Adidas has erected a ski slope with skiing mannequins. At one Pizza Hut, the official panda mascot for the Games waves from a window display.

A skiing Bing Dwen Dwen, as the panda is known in China, is also splashed across KFC boxes.

The prominence of such advertising campaigns risks unwanted attention in the United States.

Executives from Coca-Cola, Airbnb, Intel, Procter & Gamble and Visa were hauled in front of Congress in July and accused of putting profits before ethics with their Olympics sponsorships. They have all been assailed in public letters. Lawmakers in the United States and in Europe have called them out for participating.

Even so, the issue of human rights violations in China has not generated enough protests to threaten the profits of multinational companies, while the angry Chinese consumers have fueled painful boycotts.

Lets be honest nobody, nobody cares about whats happening to the Uyghurs, OK? Chamath Palihapitiya, the billionaire investor and part-owner of the National Basketball Associations Golden State Warriors, said this month. Mr. Palihapitiya was criticized for the remark, and the Warriors later played down his involvement with the team.

Of the top Olympic sponsors, only Allianz is known to have met with activists calling for a boycott of the Games. The company has not spoken out, however. A protest last week at the doors of its office in Berlin drew only seven people.

Many of the main sponsors appear to be hoping they get through the Olympics without drawing too much attention.

Activists say the sponsors and the International Olympic Committee have the economic leverage to influence the Chinese authorities but are too timid to wield it.

If any other government in the world did what the Chinese are doing in Xinjiang or even in Hong Kong, a lot of companies would just pull up stakes, said Michael Posner, a former State Department official who is now at New York Universitys Stern School of Business.

He cited decisions by companies to divest in places like Myanmar and Ethiopia, as well as the campaigns to boycott South Africa when its apartheid government sent all-white teams to the Olympics.

China is an exception, he said. Its just so big, both as a market and a manufacturing juggernaut, that companies feel they cant afford to get in the cross hairs of the government, so they just keep their mouths shut.

Claire Fu contributed research. Keith Bradsher contributed reporting.

See the original post:

For Olympic Sponsors, China Is an Exception - The New York Times