The Beijing Winter Olympics officially started on Friday, and members of European royal families have already expressed their best wishes for athletes and other staff members competing.
Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg, who is a member of the International Olympic Committee, travelled to the Chinese capital to take part in an IOC meeting before attending the Opening Ceremony with his colleagues from the stands.
But many others had to change their plans and will not be able to be in China for the Games, which will run from the 4th to the 20th of February.
King Felipe and Queen Letizia have tweeted: “The Winter Olympics are already opened! With the emotion of seeing Ander and Queralt carrying our flag in the “Bird’s nest”, we wish good luck to the entire delegation representing us in #Beijing2022.” Accompanying the tweet was a picture of Spain’s flag bearers parading in the stadium during the opening ceremony.
King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima also took to social media to express their wishes: “The Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics start today. Never before has such a large team represented the Netherlands at the Winter Games. We wish all athletes of #TeamNL good luck at #Beijing2022 and look forward to beautiful and exciting matches. Enjoy your participation!”
The Belgian royals used a picture of one of their track skating athletes, accompanied by the caption: “Good luck to all of the [Belgian] athletes participating in the Winter Olympic Games in Beijing. Go team Belgium!” Curiously, they also included the hashtag #StrongerTogether, which gained popularity during the first lockdown.
And finally, King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden even recorded a short video message to wish good luck to the country’s athletes that will be a part of this edition of the games.
The video message says partly: “I know you have been preparing for this for a long time. You have trained, trained and trained again. You have given up a lot to go to the Olympics. Now you’re there. And that, dear friends, is no small achievement!” adding, “Also remember that you should have fun with what you are doing!”
The Princess Royal also has taped a video message for UK athletes and remembered her own experience in competing at the highest level for any sport. She was an equestrian at the 1976 Montreal Summer Olympics.
About three weeks ago, the Beijing Olympic Committee had to make the difficult decision of closing the Games to any outsiders, which means that, as the Tokyo Olympics in the summer of 2021, this edition will also feature no public.
This decision, coupled with individual countries’ travelling restrictions, has made it so that many royals who had anticipated attending the Games in person had to modify their plans and make do with cheering their athletes from their home couches.
