Olympics-Snow blankets Video games, delays Gu’s return to competitors

By Winni Zhou and Simon Evans

ZHANGJIAKOU, China (Reuters) – Heavy snowfall blanketed northern China on Sunday, bringing a wintry environment to the Beijing Olympics and disrupting a number of occasions, together with residence crew favorite Eileen Gu’s qualifying run within the freeski slopestyle.

The primary competitors for the San Francisco-born Gu since she received Massive Air gold for China on Tuesday had been hotly antcipated, and the posponement of the qualifiers till Monday was the highest trending subject on China’s Twitter-like Weibo.

The boys’s large slalom at Yanqing went forward regardless of decreased visibility as a result of driving snow, with begin intervals for the primary group of racers lowered to at least one minute, 45 seconds, from two minutes.

The second coaching session for the ladies’s downhill race on the identical venue was cancelled.

Yang Shu’an, vp of the Beijing organising committee, stated the storm had left an excessive amount of free snow on the freestyle course at Genting Snow Park in Zhangjiakou, about 200 km (125 miles) northwest of the Chinese language capital, for Sunday’s competitors to happen as scheduled.

“With the intention to guarantee the security of athletes, we determined to postpone the occasions,” Yang advised a information convention. “We’ve got sufficient functionality to clear the snow.”

On the males’s large slalom in Yanqing, the early skiers expressed help for the choice to go forward with the race.

“Undoubtedly, the sunshine is greater than skiable, it simply makes it tough. I prefer it,” Norway’s Henrik Kristoffersen stated after his first run.

“The snow is slightly uneven so it’s fairly aggressive in spots … slightly slick … I believe it was tough for everybody.”

The China Meterological Administration issued a blizzard warning for Sunday, forecasting important snowfall for giant elements of northern China together with Beijing.

“You may’t see a lot, you don’t know the place to place your ft,” France’s Mathieu Faivre stated after his large slalom run.

“However fortunately the floor is sort of icy, fairly common from begin to end, so I succeeded in producing a reasonably good first run.”

One beneficiary of Sunday’s snow was Paralympics mascot Shuey Rhon Rhon, who resembles a crimson Chinese language lantern capped with snow and has been eclipsed by the immense reputation of Olympics mascot Bing Dwen Dwen, an icy-suited panda.

“It’s snowing. Shuey Rhon Rhon lastly turns into the primary character,” wrote one Weibo-user.

(Reporting by Winni Zhou in Zhangjiakou, Simon Evans in Yanqing, and Muyu Xu in Beijing; Writing by Tony Munroe; Modifying by Peter Rutherford)