BPSC 70th CCE Re-exam Prelims General Studies · Question 49 of 142

Correct — D, China. The XXIV Olympic Winter Games, branded Beijing 2022, were held from 4 to 20 February 2022, with competition in some events beginning on 2 February. The venues were spread across three clusters — the city of Beijing itself, the suburban Yanqing District for the sliding and alpine events, and Zhangjiakou in Hebei for most snow events — and several 2008 buildings were reused, the Beijing National Stadium for the ceremonies and the Beijing National Aquatics Centre, the 'Water Cube' turned 'Ice Cube', for curling. Beijing had been selected on 31 July 2015 at the 128th IOC Session in Kuala Lumpur, beating Almaty, and with these Games it became the FIRST CITY ever to host both a Summer Olympics, in 2008, and a Winter Olympics. The Games ran under the motto 'Together for a Shared Future' and featured a record 109 medal events across 7 sports and 15 disciplines, with 2,880 athletes from 91 teams; Haiti and Saudi Arabia made their Winter Olympic debuts. Norway topped the medal table for the third consecutive Winter Games with 37 medals including 16 golds, the most golds ever won at a single Winter Olympics; the host nation finished fourth on golds with nine, its best Winter performance. India's contingent was a single athlete, the alpine skier Arif Khan, who carried the flag at the opening ceremony, and India's eleventh Winter Olympic appearance again ended without a medal. India also announced a diplomatic boycott of the ceremonies in February 2022 after China chose Qi Fabao, a soldier involved in the 2020 border clashes, as a torchbearer.

• (a)Canada — A two-time Winter Olympic host, but not in 2022. Canada staged the Games at Calgary in 1988 and at Vancouver in 2010. Its Beijing 2022 story was a poor one by its own standards — 26 medals of which only four were gold, leaving it outside the top ten of the medal table for the first time since 1988.
• (b)Japan — Japan has twice hosted the Winter Games, at Sapporo in 1972 and Nagano in 1998, and it hosted the Tokyo Summer Olympics in 2021 after that edition's own pandemic postponement. The Tokyo Games finishing barely six months before Beijing 2022 is what makes this option feel recent, but Tokyo was a Summer Olympics and a different host country.
• (c)South Korea — The immediately preceding host, which is what makes this the strongest decoy. PyeongChang staged the 2018 Winter Olympics, four years before Beijing, and the two together with Tokyo 2020 formed an unusual run of three consecutive Games in East Asia. One edition too early.

The Winter Olympic Games have been held since Chamonix in 1924 and, since the Lillehammer Games of 1994, run on a four-year cycle offset by two years from the Summer Games. That offset is the reason a candidate must always check which set of Games a question is asking about: 2018 PyeongChang and 2022 Beijing are Winter editions, while 2016 Rio, 2020 Tokyo held in 2021 and 2024 Paris are Summer. The Winter programme is far smaller than the Summer one — seven sports at Beijing 2022, against thirty-two at Tokyo — because every event must be held on snow or ice, and the hosts are correspondingly concentrated in Europe, North America and East Asia. Awarding a Winter Games to Beijing, a city with very little natural snowfall, meant almost the entire snow competition was run on artificial snow, which became one of the recurring criticisms of the edition alongside the human-rights objections that produced diplomatic boycotts by several Western governments.

Olympic questions are answered from a table, not from memory of headlines, because every option in a set like this will be a real host at some point. The block to hold is: Winter — Sochi 2014, PyeongChang 2018, Beijing 2022, Milano Cortina 2026; Summer — Rio 2016, Tokyo 2020 held in 2021, Paris 2024, Los Angeles 2028, Brisbane 2032. Attach one distinguishing fact to each so a stray year cannot dislodge it, and for Beijing 2022 that fact is unmissable: it is the only city to have hosted both a Summer and a Winter Olympics. Note also how this question and the Asian Games question a page earlier are built the same way — a year, an edition, and four plausible Asian or North American hosts — so the same table answers both. The pandemic is the extra hazard on both: Tokyo 2020 was held in 2021 and the Hangzhou Asian Games of 2022 were held in 2023, but Beijing 2022 went ahead on schedule, in a closed-loop bubble, with most events shut to the public.

• The XXIV Olympic Winter Games were held at Beijing, China, from 4 to 20 February 2022, across Beijing, Yanqing District and Zhangjiakou.
• Beijing was chosen on 31 July 2015 at the 128th IOC Session in Kuala Lumpur, and became the first city to host both a Summer Olympics (2008) and a Winter Olympics.
• The Games had the motto 'Together for a Shared Future' and a record 109 medal events in 7 sports and 15 disciplines, with 2,880 athletes from 91 teams; Haiti and Saudi Arabia made their Winter debuts.
• Norway topped the medal table for a third successive Winter Games with 37 medals and a record 16 golds; the host China finished fourth on golds with nine, its best Winter result.
• India was represented by one athlete, the alpine skier Arif Khan, who was flag-bearer at the opening ceremony; it was India's eleventh Winter Olympic appearance and it has still never won a Winter Olympic medal.

• Answering South Korea from the memory of PyeongChang. That was the 2018 Winter Olympics, one edition earlier.
• Answering Japan because Tokyo hosted an Olympics recently. Tokyo 2020 was a Summer Games, held in 2021 after its own postponement.
• Assuming Beijing 2022 was postponed like Tokyo 2020 and Hangzhou 2022. It was not — it opened on schedule on 4 February 2022, inside a closed-loop bubble.

BPSC asks the Olympics as plain current-affairs recall of host, year and medal count, and often places such a question next to a related sports item, as it does here with the Asian Games. UPSC has asked Olympic questions rarely and from the historical record rather than the immediate calendar — where a future Games would be held, or when India last won an Olympic gold.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which city became the first in the world to host both the Summer and the Winter Olympic Games ?

  • (a)Tokyo
  • (b)Beijing
  • (c)Los Angeles
  • (d)Sochi

  Answer(b) Beijing — it hosted the Summer Olympics in 2008 and the Winter Olympics in 2022, using several of the same venues including the Bird's Nest stadium and the Water Cube, reconfigured for curling as the Ice Cube.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The 2026 Winter Olympics are scheduled to be held in

  • (a)Italy
  • (b)France
  • (c)Sweden
  • (d)Switzerland

  Answer(a) Italy — the Milano Cortina Games follow Beijing 2022 in the Winter cycle, sharing hosting duties between Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo.