Snowfall adds to games' challenge

BEIJING • Heavy snowfall blanketed northern China yesterday, bringing a wintry atmosphere to the Beijing Olympics and disrupting several events, including home favourite Eileen Gu's qualifying run in the freeski slopestyle.

The 18-year-old, who is the face of the Games, is seeking to become the first freeskier to win Olympic medals in three different disciplines.

The first competition for the San Francisco-born Gu since she won Big Air gold for China last Tuesday had been hotly anticipated, and the postponement of the qualifiers, which will be held today instead, was the top trending topic on Chinese social media.

Workers had tried to use shovels, brooms and blowers on the course to keep the snow from piling up on the obstacles and jumps, before the decision was made to delay the event, as the China Meteorological Administration issued a blizzard warning amid temperatures dipping to as low as -7 deg C.

Gu is among the gold-medal favourites for the slopestyle as well as the halfpipe, whose qualifiers start on Thursday.

The men's giant slalom at Yanqing went ahead despite reduced visibility due to driving snow, with start intervals for the first group of racers lowered to 1min 45sec, from 2min. However, organisers delayed the start of the second run by over an hour, while the second training session for the women's downhill race at the same venue was cancelled.

Yang Shu'an, vice-president of the Beijing 2022 organising committee, said the storm had left too much loose snow on the freestyle course at Genting Snow Park in Zhangjiakou, about 200km north-west of the capital, for the event to take place safely.

Most Olympians chose to remain on the slopes, but they are taking precautions, with American snowboarder Hailey Langland saying visibility was a challenge.

"It makes it really hard to differentiate where you're going to land, or when," she added.

At the men's giant slalom in Yanqing, the early skiers expressed support for the decision to go ahead with the race.

"Definitely, the light is more than skiable, it just makes it difficult. I like it. The snow is a little uneven so it is quite aggressive in spots... It was difficult for everyone," Norway's Henrik Kristoffersen said after his first run.

France's Mathieu Faivre said after his giant slalom run: "You can't see much, you don't know where to put your feet.

"But luckily the surface is quite icy, quite regular from start to finish, so I succeeded in producing a pretty good first run."

The region was expected to get between five and 10cm of snow by yesterday night and, after more than a week of competing on courses lined with machine-made snow, the sight of actual snow was a welcome sight for some athletes.

"Finally it feels like the Winter Olympics," Chris Plys of the US curling team said on Twitter yesterday. He shared a video of the snowfall, adding the hashtag #letitsnow.

However, in many ways, Winter Games organisers prefer artificial snow, because they can control it.

Beijing, a water-scarce city, went to great lengths to ensure that there would be enough snow to sustain its run as Olympic host, including an intensive snow-making operation.

The herculean effort included flooding a dried riverbed, diverting water from a key reservoir that supplies Beijing, and resettling hundreds of farmers and their families, who had been living in what is now the competition area, in high-rise apartments.

NYTIMES, REUTERS