Beijing Olympics won’t sell tickets to the Chinese public

The decision not to sell tickets to the Chinese public makes Beijing the second consecutive Olympics to be contested largely without fans. The Tokyo Olympics last summer also didn’t allow the general public to attend.

The move was long anticipated, as Beijing organizers had first declined to sell tickets to international spectators, then later indicated they had not decided to make them available to Chinese residents.

“Given the current situation of the COVID-19 pandemic, in order to ensure the safety of all participants and spectators, it has been decided that tickets should not be sold anymore but be part of an adapted program that will invite groups of spectators to be present on site during the Games,” the IOC said in a written announcement of the move.

“The [organizers] expect that these spectators will strictly abide by the COVID-19 countermeasures before, during and after each event so as to help create an absolutely safe environment for the athletes.”

Under rules adopted by Beijing organizers attempting to adhere to a goal of “Covid zero,” the Winter Olympics have been set up to take place in a “closed loop” sealed off from the rest of the country. Chinese visitors to the loop would have faced intensive measures including potentially lengthy quarantines.

Beijing and IOC organizers had expressed their confidence in the measures, even as Omicron ricocheted through Europe and North America ahead of the new year. Now, the highly transmissible, vaccine-evading variant has officially reached China.

The sight of empty stadiums surrounding elite athletes has been a familiar one through much of the pandemic, above all at the delayed Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo, which took place in July 2021. The Tokyo decision, however, was complicated by the sale of tens of thousands of tickets, which resulted in some ugly fights as they were voided. Athletes, meanwhile, felt the disappointment of learning that family and friends would not be able to cheer them on.

Winter athletes have been bracing for such a move for longer, and many already have experience competing in front of reporters, fellow athletes, and a handful of dignitaries.

In figure skating, the marquee sport of the Winter Olympics and the one most swayed by the presence of an audience, top competitors have competed virtually, in front of cardboard spectators, and to full houses over the past two years—displaying both the shifting attitudes to the virus over time, and different national approaches in effect.

Skaters have often said they have been disappointed not to perform to an audience, but that they understand the reason and are grateful to be able to compete at all. Still, several had carefully planned their Olympic programs with a Chinese audience in mind, including the American men’s singles skater Vincent Zhou.

“My free skate this year, ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,’ is a very well-known Chinese martial arts film. And so I think that having a program that’s also, I guess, culturally appropriate to my person and to the location of the Olympics is pretty exciting,” said Zhou in the fall.

At the time, Zhou told reporters that at least some of his extended family in China “will definitely be wanting to get tickets to see me skate live.” By January, though, he acknowledged that those hopes were fading. “The spectator situation is TBD at this point. I don’t think people, our family members will be able to get tickets or anything but whatever it is, it’s going to be a privilege to be in Beijing,” he said at the U.S. championships in Nashville.

The move could also lessen any home-field advantage for Chinese top medal prospects, including freestyle skier Eileen Gu and the pairs figure skating team of Sui Wenjing and Han Cong.

This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text