[ritchiebaby]

Well, after all the doubts and hype, the Beijing Winter Olympics finally start on 2nd February 2022. Just ignore the official date of 4th February for the Opening Ceremony with the Mixed Doubles Curling and the Luge Practice Sessions starting 2 days earlier.

There are a couple of websites giving excellent information, the succinct BBC Day-by-day Guide - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/winter-olympics/60111409 - and the Official Winter Olympics site which is more like War And Peace than Mills and Boon https://olympics.com/en/beijing-2022/ . Having said that the official website gives you full details of all the events and all the athletes, as well as a whole load of guff about "Together For A Shared Future", legacy, purity and the like.

Team GB is represented by the following 50 athletes plus 2 nominated reserves:-
Alpine skiing
Billy Major, Dave Ryding, Charlie Guest, Alex Tilley
Bobsleigh
Brad Hall, Nick Gleeson, Greg Cackett, Taylor Lawrence, Ben Simons (reserve), Mica McNeill, Montell Douglas, Adele Nicoll (reserve)
Cross country skiing
James Clugnet, Andrew Musgrave, Andrew Young
Curling
Bruce Mouat, Grant Hardie, Bobby Lammie, Hammy McMillan, Ross Whyte, Eve Muirhead, Vicky Wright, Jen Dodds, Hailey Duff, Mili Smith
Figure skating
Natasha McKay, Lilah Fear, Lewis Gibson
Freestyle skiing
Lloyd Wallace, Leonie Gerken-Schofield, Makayla Gerken-Schofield, Will Feneley, Ollie Davies, Gus Kenworthy, Zoe Atkin, James Woods, Izzy Atkin, Kirsty Muir, Katie Summerhayes
Luge
Rupert Staudinger
Speed skating
Kathryn Thomson, Farrell Treacy, Niall Treacy, Cornelius Kersten, Ellia Smeding
Skeleton
Laura Deas, Brogan Crowley, Matt Weston, Marcus Wyatt
Snowboarding
Huw Nightingale, Charlotte Bankes, Katie Ormerod

Eve Muirhead, Gus Kenworthy, Izzy Atkins and Laura Deas have all won Olympic medals already, so a few more wouldn't go amiss. I've bravely (stupidly) predicted GB would win 9 medals at these Games and I've a good feeling about doing it, as we're on the up in Winter Sports.

There is blanket coverage of the events from 12 midnight Wednesday/Thursday lasting all morning on the Eurosport channels. The BBC will ravenously devour a scrap or two thrown away by the media giants. Ppplease sir, I want some more? MORE!!! (in a Brian Blessed voice). You know the rest.

Anyway, there will be more to come from me over the weekend, so bate your breath and gast your flabbers for further revelations.