Beijing Winter Olympics opening ceremony kicks off under a cloud of controversy

Beijing — The Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics opening ceremony officially kicked off the Games on Friday, but not without controversy. China has received widespread criticism over human rights abuses, including the treatment of democratic activists and ethnic minorities in the country.

But for the hundreds of athletes who’ve been sealed inside Beijing’s tight anti-coronavirus Olympic “bubble” for days already, the focus was on winning, and it has been for days: The actual sporting events began days ago, before the opening ceremony.

As CBS News correspondent Jamie Yuccas reports, the Chinese National Stadium, known as the “Bird’s Nest,” was filled on Friday with athletes from all over the world. But it was short on diplomats: The U.S., Australia, Canada and the U.K. all refused to send the customary diplomatic delegation to Beijing in protest of China’s human rights violations.

Opening ceremony organizers hoped that politics would be ignored so they could broadcast their vision and theme for the Games to the world: “Together a shared future.”

As the opening ceremony parade of nations got underway on Friday inside the Bird’s Nest, there was an unusual twist for Team USA. Teammates chose curling legend John Shuster and bobsledder Elana Meyers Taylor as flagbearers, but Brittany Bowe did the actual walking for Meyers Taylor as she was stuck in a Chinese isolation hotel after testing positive for COVID-19.

But even denied the opportunity to carry the flag, Meyers Taylor told Yuccas it was an honor to be chosen.

“I’m super excited,” she told CBS News on a video call from her hotel. “I come from a military family. I’m a first-generation immigrant, and so to have all that history and to know what the American flag means to my family, like, it is huge to be asked to carry it.”

Meyers Taylor recently spoke out after critics said she and other athletes should boycott the Games over China’s human rights record. In an op-ed for USA Today, she acknowledged the concerns but wrote: “To go to Beijing and compete — as an American, a woman, a person of color and as a special needs parent — says more than any boycott could.” 

Beijing is the first city to host both a summer and winter Olympics, and each has carried controversy over human rights abuses. Chinese authorities have countered by saying governments shouldn’t bring politics into the Olympics.

While it may be easy to say that sports, especially at the level of the Olympics, should not be politicized, there are a lot of people in sports who have an opinion, and one veteran American journalist in China says it’s impossible to separate the two.

“The fact is that sports has been political from the beginning of time, and every Olympics has had an element of politics in it,” New York Times Beijing bureau chief Steven Lee Myers told Yuccas.

The Games have been underway for a couple days.

On Friday morning, U.S. medal hopeful Nathan Chen skated flawlessly in his short program, part of the team event. And while the U.S. women’s hockey team beat Finland in their opener, they lost a major player for the tournament when forward Briana Decker went down with a painful injury to her lower leg.