SPORT: 2022 OLYMPIC GAMES
competition disrupted by heavy snowfall.

The wom­en’s freeski­ing qual­i­fi­ca­tions were post­poned Sun­day due to heavy snow­fall and poor visibility.

Dif­fi­cult con­di­tions in alpine ski­ing pre­vent­ed 33 of the 87 starters in the men’s giant slalom from finishing.

Nor­way’s Hen­rik Kristof­fersen, who fin­ished fourth in the open­ing run, used an exple­tive when asked to describe how well he could see in the windy snow at the Yan­qing Nation­al Alpine Ski Center.

More snow is expect­ed on Mon­day, with tem­per­a­tures in the moun­tains expect­ed to drop fur­ther to ‑35 ° C with the wind chill.

The wom­en’s frees­ki slopestyle qual­i­fi­ca­tion was sched­uled to begin Sun­day at 10:00 a.m. local time (02:00 GMT).
Iron­i­cal­ly, the dif­fi­cul­ty caused by fresh snow came after the Games were crit­i­cized for being the first Win­ter Olympics to rely almost 100% on arti­fi­cial snow.

The arti­fi­cial snow used at Bei­jing 2022 “pos­es dif­fi­cult envi­ron­men­tal ques­tions” with more than 222 mil­lion liters of water need­ed to cre­ate snow con­di­tions, eco­log­i­cal experts said last month.

The wom­en’s frees­ki slopestyle runs — fea­tur­ing GB’s Kirsty Muir and Katie Sum­mer­hayes — have been pushed back to Monday.

In alpine ski­ing, the sec­ond run of the men’s giant slalom was delayed by snow­fall and required hours of main­te­nance on the track for the event to resume at 07:00 GMT.

Nor­way’s Hen­rik Kristof­fersen fin­ished fourth in the first run of the men’s giant slalom, despite dif­fi­cul­ty see­ing in the con­di­tions
“The snow is a lit­tle bit uneven, so it’s pret­ty aggres­sive in places, a lit­tle bit slip­pery,” Kristof­fersen said.

“I think it was dif­fi­cult for everyone.”

On whether he was con­fi­dent in rac­ing, he added, “Def­i­nite­ly. The light is more than ski­able, for sure, it makes it difficult.”

Away from the moun­tains, there was plen­ty of snow in cen­tral Bei­jing — unusu­al for the Chi­nese cap­i­tal in February.

The city aver­ages less than half an inch of snow dur­ing the month, but was cov­ered with a thick blan­ket on Sunday.

How­ev­er, the fall did not impact the city’s Games sched­ule. Events such as curl­ing, ice hock­ey and speed skat­ing were held in cov­ered are­nas in the Bei­jing area.