00:00No cheering fans from the world over or even inside China with no ticket sales.
00:06And for the 3,000 athletes plus coaches and media who do come to China, no roaming.
00:12It's an Olympics in a bubble.
00:14You'll go from your hotel to the media center to the event venues and back.
00:21You will never set foot on the streets of Beijing.
00:23Local residents have been told to stay well clear of the bubble.
00:26They even gave out warnings that if there's a traffic accident, if there's a crash involving an Olympic vehicle, you are not to approach them.
00:35It's going to be an Olympics like no other.
00:37These games are unprecedented in so many ways.
00:39We said that about the Tokyo Summer Games just last July.
00:43The Winter Olympics in Beijing is all that and more.
00:47It's just that China wants zero cases.
00:50Before the games, it was closing borders, locking down and mass testing millions at any hint of an outbreak.
00:57Now with the Olympics, it's set up a bubble called the closed loop where everyone is vaccinated or quarantined and gets a COVID test every day.
01:06What China would like to be able to say at the end of the games is we pulled off something that no other country could.
01:13And specifically, I think they're looking at the virus.
01:17They want to be able to say that we had the ability to not have any major outbreaks.
01:23Only six months separate the Winter Games from the summer after the Tokyo Games were delayed a year due to the pandemic.
01:30They come at a time where China has fallen out of favor with most other major nations over human rights and basic freedoms.
01:37The US, Canada, UK and Australia are boycotting the games politically, not sending official delegations.
01:45Athletes are still competing.
01:47The Winter Games are in China because few others wanted them.
01:51That's how we find ourselves in a situation like we have today, where an egregious human rights violator is hosting the Olympics.
01:58Jules Boykoff is a professor at Pacific University and has written four books on the politics of the games.
02:04In a sense, having an authoritarian power in control of the Olympic sphere could actually help in terms of preventing people from taking risks around coronavirus.
02:15Beijing hosted the Summer Games in 2008.
02:18It becomes the first city to also see a Winter Games.
02:21The iconic Bird's Nest Stadium will be reused for the opening and closing ceremonies.
02:27Ice events will also happen in Beijing.
02:29But the games are also happening northwest of here, in two other areas in the mountains.
02:34A fast train built just for the Olympics goes to Zhangjiakou in Hebei province.
02:40Really, this is not a place you would expect to find a huge amount of downhill skiing.
02:45These are places that are very dry, get very low levels of precipitation each year.
02:51That means making artificial snow, using millions of gallons of water.
02:56On that snow is where American skier Mikayla Schifrin continues to fly.
03:01A gold medalist in a slalom, a giant slalom. She'll be a favorite in those again. I think she may ride up as many as five disciplines.
03:10On the ice is where 22-year-old Nathan Chen keeps grabbing championships, but struggled in the last games.
03:19If he can skate as he normally skates, if the pressure of just winning and winning and winning doesn't get to him, I think he could have a phenomenal Olympics.
03:31On the track, a new sport, a new event, the monobob, a bobsled with a solo driver.
03:37And at this Olympics, open only to women.
03:40Expect to hear the name Kaylee Humphries here, a Canadian now competing as an American.
03:45She is the most successful female bobsled racer ever, three Olympic medals.
03:51And she has come to dominate the world in the monobob as well.
03:54So suddenly the U.S. could be very, very good in women's bobsled.
03:59Almost 14 years ago, the Summer Games in Beijing were billed as a chance for China to be more open, a nation on the rise, seeking its place of power with the Western world.
04:09If 2008 was coming out party, this is really the sort of the final arrival that we are here and we're not going anywhere.
04:16But the problem is that globally, the attitude towards China has changed a lot in that time period.
04:22At an Olympics like no other, a challenge like no other, living and competing in a bubble, even eating in one with food served by robots.
04:31It has those going, talking.
04:33We just don't know. This is weird. This is an Olympics to survive, not to enjoy.
04:39And how many people told me that this is the first time they're not looking forward to an Olympics?
04:43And this one's just like, yeah, let's just get there and let's just get let's just get through this one.
04:48We're off and we're out.
04:57We got lots ofuffations.
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