Olympics Updates: I.O.C. President Could Be Pressed About Peng Shuai

When Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee, sits down for his traditional pre-Games news conference on Thursday night, the pressing questions will be plentiful.

Chief among them could be the status of Peng Shuai, the tennis player from China who largely disappeared from public life after making sexual abuse accusations against a political official in November.

But Bach is also expected to be questioned about the Beijing Games’ strict Covid prevention measures, which have snared several athletes and team personnel in sometimes onerous and confusing protocols; subtle threats by Chinese officials against athletes who plan protests; and China’s suppression of the predominantly Muslim Uyghur minority, in the western Xinjiang region, and accusations that Uyghurs are being pressed into forced labor.

The status of Peng, however, could take center stage when Bach speaks at 7 p.m. local time (6 a.m. Eastern). The I.O.C. has been broadly criticized for its response to the situation, suggesting at first that it would handle the case with “quiet diplomacy” — meaning that the organization would not publicly contribute to the furor over her whereabouts. Critics and human rights campaigners viewed that not as diplomacy, but as an unwillingness to confront China — a vital Olympic partner — about its treatment of Peng, a three-time Olympian.

But the furor continued. Later that month, Bach conducted a video call with Peng. The I.O.C. did not release a video or a transcript of the call, and their statement revealing that it had taken place, which made no reference to Peng’s accusations, raised more questions than it answered.

Among the few tidbits of information offered was that Bach and Peng had agreed to try to meet for dinner when he arrived in Beijing for the Games. Neither Bach nor the Olympic organizers have commented on the status of that meeting.

transcript

transcript

Listen to ‘The Daily’: The Censoring of Peng Shuai

China’s decision to censor a star athlete has confronted the sports industry with a dilemma — speak out on her behalf or protect its financial interests in the country.

sabrina tavernise

From The New York Times, I’m Sabrina Tavernise. This is The Daily.

China’s decision to censor a star athlete has confronted the sports industry with a dilemma. Speak out on her behalf or protect their financial interests in China. Today: I spoke to my colleague, Matt Futterman, about the unexpected way that dilemma is playing out.

It’s Friday, December 10.

Matt, I keep seeing headlines involving China and a woman tennis player. And I’m not quite sure what to make of them. And as a longtime sportswriter for The Times who’s covering this story, help me understand it. Tell me, where does it start?

matthew futterman

So this story starts on November 2nd when Peng Shuai, who has long been one of China’s most popular tennis players, certainly, and probably even one of its most popular athletes — a three-time Olympian, Grand Slam doubles champion — she goes on one of China’s largest social media sites, Weibo, and she posts a lengthy blog post, I guess you would call it, detailing her relationship, which culminated in a sexual assault. And she states in this post, “Even if it’s just me, like an egg hitting a rock, or a moth to a flame, courting self-destruction, I’ll tell the truth about you.” And “you” happens to be a gentleman named Zhang Gaoli, who was one of the members of China’s seven-member ruling committee along with Xi Jinping. And this is the sort of accusation that does not get made against powerful people in China.

sabrina tavernise

Wow. So here’s this woman tennis player who’s taking on a really prominent and powerful Chinese leader. And just listening to her words and the image it makes — “crack like an egg hitting a rock.” I mean, it’s like she knows, and she’s saying she knows this is an incredibly risky move.

matthew futterman

Yes, she says that, and she says a lot of other things that are really disturbing. She talks about not feeling like she’s worth living essentially, but also not having the courage to die. Talking about sort of her mind being worthless at this point, a state of confusion. It’s a real sort of cry for help in a lot of ways.

And it’s just incredibly upsetting and disturbing for people to read, and I’m sure very disturbing for her to reveal. And it takes off sort of immediately. She has over 500,000 followers on Weibo. And within minutes, the post is taken down.

sabrina tavernise

Oh, wow.

matthew futterman

Clearly, the people who monitor China’s social media, which is very closely monitored, as we know, this sets off alarm bells. But not before it’s been copied and put onto Twitter and Instagram and other social media platforms that aren’t available in China. So it sort of very quickly circles across the world. And while it’s catching fire, she is immediately basically scrubbed from the internet in China.

sabrina tavernise

How so? What happens?

matthew futterman

Well, you can’t search her name anymore, and Chinese officials just did everything they possibly could to stop any discussion of this. There are people who report that they mention her in private chat groups. And all of a sudden, their chat group gets zapped out.

sabrina tavernise

Wow.

matthew futterman

So the extent to which China goes to try and make this disappear is really extraordinary.

sabrina tavernise

I mean, China really wants this to go away.

matthew futterman

It would seem so. It would seem so. And we see in the coming days they also want her to go away.

sabrina tavernise

What do you mean?

matthew futterman

Well, for the next couple of weeks, nobody sees her, nobody can get in touch with her. She has had a fairly large social media presence in China. She’s a big star. She’s generally seen out and about, but there’s just no reported sightings of her. And this happens in China, people do disappear when they run afoul of the government and top government officials, but in the case of Peng Shuai, it’s a little different because she has some pretty powerful supporters in the west.

sabrina tavernise

Before we get to that, who is Peng Shuai? What do we need to know about her?

matthew futterman

She’s born in 1986 in Hunan province. Begins to play tennis as a young girl, and she shows some promise. And what I think is important about her story is that she is born sort of right in the sweet spot of where China is in terms of trying to establish itself in mainstream sports.

There are certain sports that China has been very good at for a very long time, most notably table tennis. But in the 1990s, China sort of decides that it wants to use sports to establish itself as a really sort of well-rounded world power. And if you have designs on being an international athlete and you are born in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s, you hit it just right in China.

Their big goal is that they want to host the Olympic games. And China pretty much steps on the gas in terms of developing athletes, sending kids to sports schools. And people like Peng Shuai, who was a really good tennis player as a child, she is sent off to the national tennis development program, and that’s really where her career as a tennis player begins to take off.

She starts winning some tournaments and winning some matches in the early 2000s and begins to establish herself in the later 2000s as someone who can play with the best players in the world. And that really climaxes in 2013.

archived recording

Shuai, who was dumped out of the early stages of the ladies singles, appears to be thriving on the doubles circuit. Her confidence at the net, an instrumental part of her game, was reaping the rewards for her and her partner.

matthew futterman

When playing with her Taiwanese doubles partner, Hsieh Su-Wei.

archived recording

[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]

matthew futterman

She wins the Wimbledon doubles championship. The next year she wins the French Open doubles championship. And she actually even makes the U.S. Open singles semifinals that year as well.

archived recording

Match point here. Peng finishes this match with 24 winners and only 7 unforced errors. A perfect debut, and she is in the U.S. Open semifinals for the first time in her career.

matthew futterman

And she is immediately launched into a kind of level of superstardom in China. They don’t have Grand Slam champions, for the most part. So she is seen as a really valuable asset for China in terms of making its mark as just a fully modern country that can compete on the world stage in every facet of society.

sabrina tavernise

So it’s really interesting, Matt. I mean, it sounds like from everything you’re saying she just has this really outsized role as one of the players who helped popularize tennis in China. In some ways, she kind of helped bring tennis to China.

matthew futterman

I think that’s absolutely right.

sabrina tavernise

So Peng Shuai makes this post about this high-ranking official, this sexual assault she’s accusing him of, and then she disappears. So what happens next?

matthew futterman

Well, people have noticed, and they’re trying to get in touch with her. Most importantly, the Women’s Tennis Association, which is the professional women’s tour, which has every interest in trying to protect one of its players, and tries to start reaching out to her in every possible way that they can through Chinese tennis officials. People have her contact information. And they can’t. They have no idea where she is, if she is safe, even if she’s alive or dead.

And so on November 14, Steve Simon, the head of the W.T.A., makes the decision in consultation with the players and the other officials who are on his board of directors that he’s going to go public with this. And he sets up a number of interviews in which he says this is unacceptable. We’re really concerned about Peng Shuai’s safety.

And in addition to wanting to speak with her, we want China to listen to these allegations and fully investigate them in a very public and transparent way. And the next question, of course, is well, what if they don’t? And that’s when Steve Simon says, well, if they don’t, we’re going to have to consider not doing business in China anymore.

sabrina tavernise

Oh, wow. And so how does China respond to that?

matthew futterman

Not well. China comes back and saying that you shouldn’t be mixing sports and politics like this. But in terms of how they really react to it, they don’t make a move at first in terms of producing Peng Shuai. They don’t say, OK, we’ll set up a call with you. What they do instead is they keep things pretty quiet for a couple more days.

But what happens after Steve Simon goes public with this is the hashtag on Twitter that has been sort of bubbling out there — where is Peng Shuai? With a picture of her — that begins to take off in the same way that her initial post begins to take off.

archived recording

This morning, tennis’s top stars demanding answers as to the whereabouts of 35-year-old Chinese tennis star Pung Shuai.

matthew futterman

And you have incredibly prominent tennis players and even some people outside of tennis who start posting that on Twitter in solidarity.

archived recording

Last week, Roger Federer saying that the tennis world is united around her.

matthew futterman

These are people like Serena Williams, Billie Jean King, who is the founder of the Women’s Tennis Tour. Naomi Osaka.

archived recording

I’m in shock of the current situation. And I’m sending love and light her way. #WhereIsPengShuai?

matthew futterman

And even someone as prominent as Gerard Piqué, who is one of the most popular soccer players in the world who has something like 20 million followers on social media.

sabrina tavernise

Wow.

matthew futterman

And he posted. So this becomes a real thing.

And all of a sudden, not only are all of these athletes putting the spotlight on China, but they’re also beginning to put pressure on the International Olympic Committee for them to do something about this, because Beijing is set to host the Winter Olympics beginning in February. And in response to that, China starts scrambling.

The first thing they do is they post an email on western social media. It’s a very awkward email that begins, “This is Peng Shuai.” And it’s an immediate tip-off that this actually isn’t Peng Shuai.

And in several sentences, she basically recants everything she says and tells everybody she’s safe and fine and pay no attention to what I said earlier this month. And Steve Simon says, actually, this doesn’t make me feel better about what’s been happening with Peng Shuai. It actually makes me feel more concerned because it’s so clear that she hasn’t written it.

sabrina tavernise

Right.

matthew futterman

The next thing they do is they have their correspondence in the state-run media get into the picture. And one journalist posts pictures of Peng Shuai in a bedroom surrounded by stuffed animals, smiling. It’s not clear exactly when these pictures had been taken. He claims to have been taken that day. And once again, nobody really believes that.

archived recording

[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]

matthew futterman

And then, when those pictures don’t make anybody feel better —

archived recording

[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]

matthew futterman

— another Chinese news figure releases a video of Peng Shuai in a Beijing restaurant with a coach talking about tennis in China. And she’s mostly listening, and this guy is talking to her and clearly trying to establish the date.

archived recording

[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]

matthew futterman

Saying things like, yesterday was November 19, right? Tomorrow is November 20, right? And I think China is trying to do what it always tries to do, which is control this story and trying to put out the fire, but they also realize it’s not working. And that’s when the International Olympic Committee gets involved.

sabrina tavernise

So tell me about that.

matthew futterman

So on Sunday, November 21, the International Olympic Committee releases pictures of Peng Shuai in a video call with the president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach. And they say that they’ve held a 30 minute conversation with her. She said that she’s safe and fine and in Beijing and resting and would like some privacy.

They don’t release a transcript of the call. They don’t explain many details of the call, but they say that they made plans to have dinner in January when Thomas Bach arrives in Beijing for the Winter Games, but there’s some interesting details about that call which are really important. The first is that Peng Shuai is not alone on this phone call. She has it with an I.O.C. athletes representative, but she also has it with a Chinese representative to the International Olympic Committee who was a part of the Chinese Tennis Federation.

And there’s another person on the phone call who was described to me as a friend to help her with her English. And that raises some alarm bells because Peng Shuai speaks perfectly fine English, according to everyone who I’ve talked to who have spoken with her. So she’s clearly not speaking independently and freely. And there’s also no mention in the statement that there’s any discussion of the sexual assault, of the allegations, of anything that’s really happened to her in terms of an investigation of those things.

And that prompts Steve Simon to say once more, while I’m perfectly happy to see that she’s alive and seemingly safe, I’m not satisfied. We haven’t been able to speak with her independently, and there’s been no movement on an investigation into this matter. And so he decides along with the people on his board, who include several top players, that enough is enough.

archived recording

And now a very big update on a very important story we have been following.

matthew futterman

And what he announces he’s doing is —

archived recording

The Women’s Tennis Association announcing it is immediately suspending all of its tournaments in China and Hong Kong.

matthew futterman

He’s going to suspend all of the W.T.A.‘s business in China, which essentially means we’re not going to have tournaments there until we see some real meaningful movement on this.

archived recording

Now, the organization’s chief of the W.T.A. says in a statement, quote, “If powerful people can suppress the voices of women and sweep allegations of sexual assault under the rug — ”

matthew futterman

We are pulling out of China, the world’s largest country.

archived recording

“And the basis on which the W.T.A. was founded. Equality for women would suffer an immense setback.”

matthew futterman

A place that everyone has agreed for decades that every sport needs to be doing business with and have a presence in.

archived recording

“I will not and cannot let that happen to the WTA and its players.”

matthew futterman

But the WTA is leaving, and that just never happens in sports.

sabrina tavernise

We’ll be right back.

Matt, so the W.T.A. suspends all tournaments in China. And you said that was extremely unusual in sports.

matthew futterman

Never happens.

sabrina tavernise

Why not?

matthew futterman

Well, I think you just have to look at the N.B.A. to understand what happens when you mess with China. Two years ago, 2019, a Houston Rockets executive sends out this tweet —

archived recording

“Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong.”

matthew futterman

— in support of the protesters in Hong Kong.

archived recording

Now, the tweet was quickly deleted, but the damage, it was already done.

matthew futterman

And all of a sudden, it becomes an absolute firestorm. China is furious. They stop selling Houston Rockets gear on their websites. They take N.B.A. games off Chinese television.

archived recording

Those games have been canceled.

matthew futterman

All these things suddenly happen.

archived recording

The N.B.A. is now scrambling to contain the fallout —

matthew futterman

You have the N.B.A. commissioner going on bended-knee and at first apologizing.

archived recording

Mr. Morey’s views have deeply offended many of our friends and fans in China, which is regrettable.

matthew futterman

But then after he gets criticized, having to say, oh, actually, our executives and players do have free speech.

archived recording

We are not apologizing for Daryl exercising his freedom of expression.

matthew futterman

So it’s just this sort of an incredible, very volatile situation where, if you sort of mess with China, there’s black and white with the Chinese. You’re either in or you’re out. And if you cross the line with them, they’re going to come after you. And the N.B.A. estimates it cost them about $300 million just because that one tweet. And what unfolded after that.

sabrina tavernise

Wow. That’s a very steep cost.

matthew futterman

Yes, $300 million is a lot of money, even for the N.B.A., which is a $10 billion organization populated by some of the richest people in the world.

sabrina tavernise

Are there other examples?

matthew futterman

Yeah, I think the most current example is the I.O.C., which has had some behavior in this situation, which has really surprised a lot of people. Forget about criticizing China. They have essentially been propping up the Chinese government by putting out these videos and these statements.

And I think there’s a big question as to why they’re doing this. And the reason is the Olympics are coming to Beijing in less than two months. And their mission is to bring the biggest countries in the world, really, all countries, big and smile, together. It’s something of a peace mission, but it’s also sort of the basis of their existence. That’s the product that they’re selling.

And if they can’t sell that product, if they can’t bring all these countries in the world together to compete against each other and create this TV show, which engrosses so many millions of people every two years, there are huge financial stakes to that. And it really sort of poses an existential threat to the Olympics if big countries decide that they don’t want to go. And the biggest of all is China.

sabrina tavernise

So Matt, money is this constant theme with companies in China. And I guess what I’m wondering is, doesn’t the W.T.A. also have business interests in China? I mean, they suspended tournaments, so presumably this affects them as well, right?

matthew futterman

It absolutely affects them. The W.T.A. actually has a huge business interest in China. We’re talking about a country that is the host in nine tournaments, including that season ending championship. And over the course of the next decade, it’s estimated that you’re looking at a loss of several hundred million dollars in China in terms of growth and in terms of investment that they have promised to make. So this would be a really costly decision.

sabrina tavernise

So given that pretty meaningful financial stake, why is the W.T.A. taking such a hard stance here then? I mean, what’s driving them to go against China’s leadership on this issue with Peng?

matthew futterman

Well, there’s a few reasons for that. I mean, I think the first is that the W.T.A. does believe it’s going to have other opportunities. For example, most recently, the tour finals. They could not be held in China because of Covid.

They moved them to Guadalajara. It was a perfectly excellent tournament. So the money is not going to go to zero. It might not be as much as they can get in China, but they will have other opportunities, and they believe in themselves. And so I think that’s one reason at a very sort of basic dollars and cents level.

Another reason is that this organization, the W.T.A., was founded in the 1970s at a time when women’s sports really didn’t exist. And it was founded on the sort of basis of women really believing in themselves. It was founded by Billie Jean King who was one of the great tennis players of her era and also just a huge activist for women’s rights. And the idea of this tour was that women deserved to be paid attention to and listened to, just like anyone else. And that brings us to Peng Shuai, who is not only not being listened to, but she’s being silenced.

sabrina tavernise

So this situation that she’s in, her effective disappearance, is really kind of going against the entire mission of the W.T.A.

matthew futterman

Yeah, this is the principle upon which this tour was founded, and it’s just sort of sacrosanct with these people that you stand up for your own, and you certainly stand up for one of your own when they put these incredibly serious allegations out there. But at this point, it doesn’t seem like any other sport is doing much more than voicing concern for Peng Shuai. Not even men’s tennis.

No one else is sort of joining the W.T.A. and saying that they’re going to follow the same lead and to spend their own events in China unless there’s a full investigation and she’s able to speak freely. That’s not happening. It’s sort of being seen as either a tennis problem or a female problem rather than a human problem.

Peng Shuai along with Li Na was a woman who really brought tennis into the limelight in China. And it really worked in the way China wanted it to. It helped legitimize the country as a truly modern society.

But beyond that, she also served as a real inspiration to women and girls that they could do anything and be anything, because that’s what happens when you become a champion in sports. And now, through no fault of her own, she’s been silenced by the Chinese government. She’s kind of disappeared. And so much of what she has dedicated her life to, it’s lost.

sabrina tavernise

Matt, thank you.

matthew futterman

Thanks very much.

sabrina tavernise

We’ll be right back.

Here’s what else you need to know today. Federal health regulators approved booster shots of the Pfizer BioNTech coronavirus vaccine for 16 and 17-year-olds, clearing the way for several million teenagers to receive an additional shot. Adults have been eligible for boosters since November 19. And about 50 million people, that’s 1/4 of all vaccinated adults, have gotten one.

Early tests suggests that the fast-spreading variant, Omicron, dulls the power of two doses, and regulators say the booster would offer additional protection. And a Starbucks store in Buffalo voted to form a union, making it the only one of nearly 9,000 company-owned stores in the U.S. to be unionized. Workers said they heard from other Starbucks employees across the country during the campaign, saying they were interested in unionizing too. The number of workers was small, but the effort was significant for the potential challenge it presents to the giant coffee retailer, which has opposed unionization.

Today’s episode was produced by Robert Jimison, Mooj Zadie, Rachel Quester, Alex Young and Luke Vander Ploeg. It was edited by Lisa Chow and Patricia Willens and engineered by Chris Wood, with original music by Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Brad Fisher and Dan Powell. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

[music]

That’s it for The Daily. I’m Sabrina Tavernise. See you on Monday.

Hockey is hardly a silent sport, a rollicking cascade of ice-shaving, board-crashing and puck-slamming.

But when Sarah Fillier scored for Canada about a minute into a game against Switzerland on Thursday in Beijing, there was hardly a sound, especially from the stands. And so it went as Canada began its pursuit of a gold medal.

Cheering? Still forbidden, apparently, for fear that it will spread the coronavirus. Clapping for a big play? Didn’t happen. Some people waved small flags featuring Bing Dwen Dwen, the panda mascot of the Beijing Games. But the heads of others did not seem to move with the action.

It is not clear who, exactly, is filling the seats at these Olympics. Organizers said last month, when they rescinded a policy to sell tickets to residents of the Chinese mainland, that officials would “invite groups of spectators to be present on site.” And on Thursday, they said about 150,000 people from outside the Olympic bubble would attend events, including diplomats, “winter sports enthusiasts” and students.

Fans will be permitted only at venues in the Beijing and Zhangjiakou event clusters, meaning that spectators will be absent from Alpine skiing and sliding sports competitions, all of which will be contested outdoors.

“The number of spectators we’ll have will very much depend on the event itself and will be decided on an ad hoc basis,” Pierre Ducrey, a top International Olympic Committee official, said this week.

There were indeed several hundred spectators for hockey at the National Indoor Stadium in Beijing. They were masked, distanced and kept well away from the athletes, journalists and others who have been allowed inside the Olympic bubble. (A phalanx of medical personnel, dressed in white protective suits, sat near the Swiss.)

They stirred briefly in the third period, coaxed by a stadium announcement. But the only cheers for the skating and the scoring came from the benches. Well, one of them at least: Canada won, 12-1.

“To be honest,” said Canada’s Blayre Turnbull, “we’re so focused on the game and just cheering each other on, that we don’t notice that stuff.”

Alpine skiers are not the kind of people who rattle easily, but there was Matthias Mayer of Austria, the gold medalist in the downhill in 2014 and the Super-G in 2018, rocking back and forth in the starter’s hut at the top of the downhill course and experiencing something he does not often feel at the top of a mountain: nerves.

Mayer was the first person to ski the Olympic downhill course under race conditions during Thursday’s first training session at the Yanqing National Alpine Center, roughly 50 miles northwest of Beijing.

Alpine skiing at the Olympics often takes place on an unfamiliar mountain that isn’t on the World Cup circuit, but to allow racers to prepare the World Cup usually holds an event at the Olympic venue in the year before the Games. The pandemic, and China’s strict border controls, prevented that from happening in Yanqing.

So on Thursday, only three days before the actual downhill race, the world’s best skiers got their first chance to take a run on the mountain where they will compete for the biggest prize in their sport.

“It’s different, for sure,” Aleksander Aamodt Kilde of Norway said of the prospect of competing for Olympic medals on unfamiliar terrain.

They arrived early, many reaching the mountain not long after the sun rose for a 90-minute inspection of the slope.

“It was really clear when we got up top, and you could see the towers of downtown from up there,” said Travis Ganong of the United States.

What was the skiing like? Nearly everyone was swooning over the light, crisp, manufactured snow. “Some of the best I’ve ever seen,” Vincent Kreichmayr of Austria said of the conditions.

The nearly two-mile course, nicknamed Rock, winds its way through what is essentially a downhill canyon. It provides little time to relax. “There’s just not really a gliding section,” said Bryce Bennett of the United States.

The jumps are fairly tame by World Cup standards, including the last shot out of the canyon just above the finish, Bennett said, but the turns come one right after another.

Managing the run was pretty much all anyone was trying to do on Thursday, saving the speed for the coming days when they know the course a little better.

“I was trying not to take it too crazy, because I didn’t know the speed,” Mayer said of his maiden run, the 37th fastest of the day. “I missed two gates. I have a lot to learn.”

For months, most discussions about the Olympic women’s hockey tournament have focused on the prospect of another epic final between the United States and Canada. All the while, one of the Americans’ best players has had her mind on a different game.

“I can’t look past our first game against Finland,” Kendall Coyne Schofield, the United States captain, said in an interview last month. “That’s our first goal. That’s our first task.”

The United States, which captured the gold medal in South Korea in 2018, will open this year’s Olympic tournament on Thursday against Finland, which left Pyeongchang with the bronze.

As is the case with most of women’s hockey’s top national teams, the squads are quite familiar with one another: Finland forced the United States to a shootout in the final at the 2019 world championship before falling, and the teams are meeting in their Olympics opener for the third straight Games. The Americans have won all eight of their previous Olympic meetings, however, and they have never lost an opener at the Games.

The Americans and the Finns are both expected to advance easily to the tournament’s medal round again. But first, Thursday’s matchup on ice west of central Beijing will give both teams an early opportunity to work through Olympic jitters and to take each other’s measure with pride, not medals, at stake. The game is scheduled for 8:10 a.m. Eastern time on Thursday.

Along with Schofield, who is among the world’s fastest skaters, the United States will arrive at the Wukesong Sports Center with a roster that includes Hilary Knight, who is appearing in her fourth Games, and Maddie Rooney, the goalie who helped deliver a shootout victory against Canada in the 2018 gold medal game.

Finland will bring plenty of experience, too. Forward Michelle Karvinen will be playing in her fourth Olympics, as will Jenni Hiirikoski, one of the sport’s most fearsome defenders and the recipient of the most valuable player award at the 2019 world championship.

The organizers of the Winter Olympics in Beijing turned to an old friend when picking a mascot: the panda.

Organizers selected Bing Dwen Dwen, designed by Cao Xue, from more than 5,800 potential mascot designs that had been submitted, according to the official site of the Olympics. Wrapped in a protective layer of ice mimicking an astronaut’s suit, Bing has been making its way around the bubble that is the home to hotels, competition sites and the Olympic Village.

The panda, once considered endangered, is native to China and is the country’s national animal. It has long been used by the government as a diplomatic tool — like the pandas that have been donated to zoos in the United States — and has been minted on gold coins issued by the government. In 2008, when Beijing hosted the Summer Olympics, the organizers chose a panda as one of the five official Fuwa, or good-luck dolls, that served as mascots.

A committee made up of representatives of the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts and the Jilin University of the Arts chose Bing, which means “ice” in Mandarin. And Dwen Dwen translates as “robust and lively,” and represents children, according to the website.

The first Olympic mascot, Shuss, was created for the 1968 Games held in Grenoble, France. At the time, organizers referred to Shuss as a “character” and not as a mascot. Its crude depiction of a man zipping downhill on skis is probably a result of the fact that it was created in a “hurry,” according to the Olympics website. The designer was given one night to design Shuss.

Since then, there have been 26 mascots for the Winter and Summer Games, including an anthropomorphic American bald eagle dressed as Uncle Sam for the 1984 Games in Los Angeles. One of the more famous ones was Cobi, a mountain dog from the Pyrenees that was drawn in a Cubist form, for the 1992 Games in Barcelona.

The Beijing Olympics will open on Friday without several athletes and at least one International Olympic Committee member who have tested positive for the coronavirus in the final days before the Games.

The athletes come from a variety of sports and at least a half-dozen countries, and include at least two American medal contenders.

Elana Meyers Taylor, a three-time Olympic medalist and one of the most decorated American bobsledders in history, said on Tuesday that she had tested positive for the coronavirus shortly after arriving in Beijing for the Winter Olympics. Meyers Taylor, 37, who revealed her positive test in a post on Instagram, must return two negative test results to be released and to compete.

She is at least the second U.S. bobsledder affected in recent days. Josh Williamson, a member of the men’s two-man and four-man sleds, tested positive last week, part of what has been reported to be a larger outbreak involving coaches and others close to the team. “This has not been an easy pill to swallow,” Williamson wrote of missing the chance to accompany his teammates to China.

The I.O.C. member who tested positive, Emma Terho of Finland, announced her result on Instagram and said she would continue her work remotely while in isolation. Terho serves as chair of the I.O.C.’s Athletes’ Commission.

Not all of those who have tested positive but who are still feeling well are certain to miss out on their Olympic moments, however. Meyers Taylor, for example, could benefit from a schedule that won’t see her events start until later in the Games.

Among the latest cases:

• Marita Kramer, an Austrian ski jumper who was expected to contend for a gold medal at the Beijing Games, will not compete because of a lingering coronavirus infection. “No words, no feelings, just emptiness,” Kramer wrote on Instagram. “Is the world really this unfair?” Kramer, 20, tested positive on Saturday and had hoped that the infection would ebb in time for her to compete this week. But the Austrian Ski Federation said Kramer had recorded another positive test after returning home and would not be able to clear China’s stringent protocols in time.

• The Russian skeleton racer Nikita Tregubov, who won a silver medal at the 2018 Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, announced on Instagram that he had tested positive and would not travel to Beijing. He and his teammate Vladislav Semenov will be replaced on the team, the president of the Russian bobsled federation told the state news agency Tass.

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• An outbreak on Norway’s powerful cross-country ski teams grew to include Heidi Weng, a nine-time world medalist, and her teammate Anne Kjersti Kalva. Earlier, a coach on the men’s team tested positive, briefly sending that entire squad into isolation as close contacts.

• A series of pretournament positives left the Czech men’s hockey team struggling to find enough players to practice last weekend, their coach said, and the Swiss women’s team flew to Beijing without at least two players, Alina Müller and Sinja Leemann. The coaches of both teams said they remained hopeful that their players would be cleared in time to travel and to compete. The women’s tournament begins Thursday; the men don’t play until next Wednesday.

• Russia’s bobsled team arrived in Beijing with half of its four-man squad after Aleksei Pushkarev and Vasily Kondratenko recorded positive tests at a training camp in Sochi on the eve of their team’s departure. The head coach of the Russian team, Danil Chaban, said neither man would be replaced, in the hope that they would be cleared in time for the bobsled competition, which begins Feb. 13.

• Denmark’s men’s hockey team held its first pre-Olympic practice on Wednesday without the six players who tested positive for Covid-19 upon arriving in China, The Associated Press reported. The Danish Olympic federation said that Matthias Asperup and Nick Olesen, both forwards, had tested positive and gone into isolation. Four other players also missed practice after testing positive, but the team hopes to get the players out of isolation in the coming days.

For a moment on Wednesday night, USA Network’s broadcast of Alpine skiing looked more like a cooking segment than a sporting event.

Steve Porino, an NBC Sports analyst and a former downhill skier, armed with Alpine skis like those used by such stars as Matthias Mayer, explained how the apparatus was as much a weapon as just a piece of sports equipment. (It was a slow sports day in Beijing: Alpine skiing, curling and hockey.)

To prove his point, USA showed video of Bode Miller, the Olympic gold medalist, crashing during a 2015 race. The edge of one of his skis tore through his suit, cutting into his hamstring and a tendon.

That was when Porino strapped on safety goggles, took aim at a papaya on a table in front of him and whacked the edge of a ski through the fruit.

Next came a watermelon: a clean slice and a splash of seeds and liquid. Finally, he made his way through a pineapple, yelling, “Aha!” as he knocked half of it off the table.

At the end of the segment, Ted Ligety, a two-time gold medalist, joined Porino as he alluded to how athletes often celebrate with champagne. Ligety twice took aim at the cork of a champagne bottle, succeeding in sabering it open on the second try.

As he took a sip, he murmured about “sweet victory.”

Through tears, Kim Meylemans explained how she had thought her nightmare was over.

Meylemans, a skeleton racer from Belgium, had only recently returned to competition after a bout with the coronavirus in early January when she departed for Beijing on Sunday. A dozen negative tests in the weeks before her departure for the Winter Olympics had reassured her that her recovery had come just in time.

So Meylemans was stunned to learn that she had tested positive upon arrival, and frustrated when she was quickly moved into an isolation hotel. What happened next shook her.

In a tearful video posted on Instagram, Meylemans related how she thought she had been told by the Chinese authorities that she would be allowed to return to the Olympic Village to complete her isolation, only to be ferried to another facility and yet more isolation.

Breathing hard and appearing bewildered, Meylemans said she was unsure whether she would be fit to compete. Even Belgian Olympic officials had not been told where she was being taken, she suggested. “I ask you all to give me some time to consider my next steps, because I’m not sure I can handle 14 more days and the Olympic competition while being in this isolation,” she said.

Relief came quickly. Hours after her video spread widely on social media, Meylemans posted a new video in which she said she had received a knock on the door at 11:35 p.m. from officials who promptly escorted her to the Olympic Village.

Still, her case underscored the discomfort and confusion that many athletes, journalists and other visitors had expressed before the Games in China, which is enforcing strict measures as part of a so-called zero-Covid strategy. Those rules have frequently led to confusion, concern and — in the case of Meylemans — fear.

“This is the problem we said there would be from the beginning,” said Rob Koehler, the director general Global Athlete, an advocacy group. “No one knew what to expect.”

The International Olympic Committee, which had been negotiating with the Chinese authorities to reduce the trigger value for Games participants to return a negative test, said in a statement that it had learned of Meylemans’s case after she was released. It said she had been treated in accordance with the rules for close contacts in the so-called Olympics playbooks that govern Covid protocols for the Games. (Several New York Times journalists attending the Games have been subjected to the same restrictions, which require them to eat and travel alone while they work.) The decision to move Meylemans to a second isolation facility, the I.O.C. said, had been simply a matter of available space.

“Close contacts can train and compete, live in the Olympic Village, but need to be in a single room, transported alone and need to eat alone,” the I.O.C. said.

When Olympic officials were informed of Meylemans’s “difficult situation,” the I.O.C. said, they moved quickly to arrange a single room for her in the Olympic Village.

Once inside, a visibly relieved Meylemans was soon back online, posting a series of Instagram stories while reclining in bed. She thanked friends for their concern and Belgian Olympic officials for their help. “At least I’m back in the village,” she said. “I feel safe.”

Parks and avenues in Beijing are lined with red Lunar New Year lanterns. Streets are deserted as families gather at home to celebrate the Year of the Tiger. The five-ring symbol of the Olympics and the cuddly panda mascot of the Winter Games are hardly to be seen.

Winter sports lovers around the globe are turning their eyes toward Beijing as the Winter Olympics begin on Friday. But in the Chinese capital itself, outside the “closed loop” bubble for participants, there are few signs of an Olympic fever.

The biggest reason seems to be the time of year. The arrival of the Lunar New Year was celebrated in China on Monday night. The entire week, through Sunday, is a national holiday in mainland China. Many stores, restaurants and other public areas are closed.

Pandemic precautions are another reason for the silence in Beijing. Before the pandemic, an influx of tour groups from the country’s hinterland poured into the capital each winter during the holiday. Not this year.

Most tourism across provincial borders has been banned in China this winter to prevent spreading the coronavirus. The city of Beijing has been strict about prohibiting out-of-town tour groups.

But traveling home is still allowed. Many Chinese did not return to their hometowns the previous two Lunar New Years, when coronavirus vaccines were not widely available, but they are heading back this year. Data from the Ministry of Transport shows that long-haul holiday travel in the two weeks preceding Lunar New Year rose by half compared with the same period in 2021.

Beijing residents who have not left town have limited options for going out. The local authorities are telling groups booking restaurants or other venues during the next few weeks that they must accept a vaguely defined legal responsibility if anyone at their event is infected with the coronavirus.

Still, there are some indications in Beijing that the Olympics are underway. Special lanes have been marked on highways for Olympic vehicles. Some signs have been placed on roadsides and buses. In Zhangjiakou, an area near Beijing that will host outdoor events like cross-country skiing, streets have been decorated with Olympic signs.

The muted approach is nonetheless a big contrast to the 2008 Summer Olympics, which were held in August and prompted residents to flood sunny sidewalks and cheer on the Games.

Li You contributed research.

The 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing begin this week with the opening ceremony on Friday, the official start of the Games. (Competition, it should be noted, will already be underway by then, in curling, women’s ice hockey and freestyle skiing; the Games — Winter or Summer — don’t easily fit in 17 days anymore.)

The opening ceremony is scheduled for 8 p.m. in China — that will be 7 a.m. Eastern time and 4 a.m. Pacific — and take place at the National Stadium, known as the Bird’s Nest. That’s the same stadium that hosted the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Games, the last time China hosted the Olympics.

Although the Bird’s Nest was built specifically to hold events during the 2008 Games, no competitions will take place there this year. The stadium also will be the site for the Games’ closing ceremony on Feb. 20. (It hosted the closing ceremony in 2008, too.)

Opening ceremonies are a spectacle of pomp and circumstance, an opportunity for host nations to bedazzle the world through elaborate song, dance and visual effects. They provide a chance for countries to display their pride and national character to a global audience, something that China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, has been doing for years as he has become the country’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong.

Coverage of the opening ceremony begins at 6:30 a.m. Eastern on NBC and also will be broadcast live on NBC’s streaming service, Peacock. NBC will re-air the ceremony on tape delay in prime time at 8 p.m. Friday.

Burner phones and loaner laptops. Quarantine training centers and a bubble the size of a small city. Departure tests and arrival tests and daily tests. So. Many. Tests.

Every Olympics presents hurdles, from distance to language to politics. But rarely have those entrusted with transporting the teams, coaches, athletes and gear faced an obstacle course like the one currently testing their organizational skills, resources and patience.

Call these the Logistics Games, because no Olympics in history have been this hard to put on, get to or be at.

The reasons, of course, are painfully clear. The coronavirus pandemic has made byzantine health measures par for the course at any sporting event, and at almost every national border. But such rules are even more intense in China, where the government that will host the Winter Olympics that open on Friday has taken a “zero Covid” stance on managing the virus.

Even before the pandemic, China was not exactly an easy place to navigate for international travelers. Add the fact that the competition is starting only six months after the close of the Summer Games in Tokyo, which were postponed by a year near the start of the coronavirus pandemic, and the entire sports world has a recipe for a splitting migraine.

Planning, then, has become an Olympic sport all its own. U.S. officials, for example, chose to ship containers full of athletic gear, office supplies and even food from last summer’s Summer Games in Tokyo straight to Beijing, rewriting an established playbook, because of the unusually swift turnaround. Administrators in every country have stayed up nights scouring databases of approved testing sites, and coaches have worked to calm athletes trying to hold their nerve.

The whole situation, said Luc Tardif, the president of the International Ice Hockey Federation, is “a nightmare.”