How the Olympic Village looks like in Beijing and where our athletes live: photos and video

We are only three days away from the event we are eagerly awaiting. This year’s Winter Olympics are being held in Beijing. Some athletes have already arrived on site to familiarize themselves with the competition site and sharpen their skills. The competition is expected to be tough in all disciplines, and this is a big plus. After all, it is spectacular competitions and unexpected victories that both spectators and athletes are waiting for. Well, we can only wish good luck to all those who will come to fight for medals. And especially our compatriots.

And while the competition has not started, we offer a little peek behind the scenes and see how the first days of athletes in China. Our hero can’t wait to tell you all about it.

Russian luge athlete, member of the Olympic team

Hi! I’m Roma Repilov, a Russian luge racer, three-time World Champion, two-time World Cup winner and just a good guy. I’ve been doing luge since I was 13 years old, and now I’m 25. I am already in Beijing and now I will tell you everything.

Saturday, January 29: “China is fine. The locals did their best.”

Everything started with a light quarantine in Novogorsk: there we had a lot of food, rest, and Olympic equipment. Then the flight – flying alone in four seats is cooler than in business class. And later we arrived at the Olympic Village. Everything’s fine. In fact, China is fine. There are no super bright symbols of the Games on every corner, but the locals have tried their best: in terms of anti-kind measures, speed of passing all the tests, borders and so on. In general, if you treat everything with understanding, given the time we arrived at, it’s cool here.

Roman Repilov

We live in the mountains, and they say our village is the most beautiful of all. There is a lot of space to walk, to breathe the air. There is also entertainment: a couple of games with tasks, for which you get symbolic tokens, game centers, board games, several viewing platforms and much more.

The guys also try to eat: there is a big choice, a lot of usual food, but there is also something with creativity😁 That’s all for now. Tomorrow the boxes with the sleds should arrive, hopefully without any accidents this time🤞

So soon we’ll be starting training camp for the first Olympic training.

Sunday, January 30: “We found out that there is a ropeway not far away and went for a reconnaissance”

Yesterday was a more relaxed day. We looked at everything in the village and it turned out there was nothing else to do. We found out that there was a cable car from where we were to the peak of the mountain, so we decided to go exploring. It took about 25 minutes to get to the highest point. At the top we saw the starting gate for the supergiant. It looks intimidating, the slopes are strong. And the wind is blowing hard: it’s colder than in the village, by sensations 10😅 degrees. On arrival, while I was editing the vlog on YouTube, I was still taken away by the doping control😐. An evening of billiards before bed and the day was over.

Those were my first impressions of China and the upcoming Olympics. I’ll be back soon with more news!

Edited by Margarita Ivannikova.