Ten sports films to watch during the winter Olympics

‘There’s no such thing as bad snow, just bad skiers’

(Popular skiing saying)

The 2022 Olympics have to an extent been overshadowed by diplomatic boycotts over host nation China’s alleged human rights abuses.

The US, UK, Canada, Australia, Lithuania, Kosovo, Belgium, Denmark, and Estonia will not be sending any ministers or officials. Other countries (New Zealand, Austria, Slovenia, Sweden, and the Netherlands) cite Covid concerns for the lack of official representation.

Whether boycotting the event will have any discernible effect is debatable. France’s President Macron certainly doesn’t think so: ‘I don’t think we should politicise these topics, especially if it is to take steps that are insignificant and symbolic.’

On a less serious note, I felt a pang of childlike disappointment when I learned that the competition will be using fake snow for the vast majority of the event (presuming real snow does not fall from the heavens).

Of course, it is not the first time that that Winter Olympics have had recourse to ersatz stuff – Innsbruck (1964), Lake Placid (1980), Sochi (2014) and PyeongChang (2018) all had to rely on ever-increasing amounts of imitation snow.