BEIJING: The Beijing Winter Olympics begin one month on Tuesday with diplomatic boycotts, the coronavirus and the fate of Peng Shuai all hanging heavy over the Games.
The Chinese capital on February 4-20 will become the first host of a Winter and Summer Olympics, having staged the Games in 2008, seen then as a coming-out party for what has since become the world’s second-largest economy.
This time, China’s communist rulers hope the Games will inspire 300 million winter sports enthusiasts and help unite the world in the face of the pandemic.
With the Games taking place inside a “bubble” cocooning the nearly 3,000 athletes together with non-competitors, it looks being the most restricted mass sporting event since Covid-19.
Organisers have pledged to make the…
