China chooses panda as Winter Olympics mascot
has chosen its most iconic animal—the panda—to be the official mascot of the Beijing Olympics in 2022, the Winter Games organising committee announced on Tuesday.
The mascot, named ‘Bing Dwen Dwen’ is a chubby giant panda wearing a suit of ice. The black and white bear has a “heart of gold and a love of all things winter sports,” tweeted the Beijing Organising Committee for the 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.
For the Paralympic Winter Games, the mascot is a blushing red lantern named ‘Shuey Rhon Rhon’. Beijing will be the first city to host both summer and winter Games, after winning the bid in 2015, beating out underdog Almaty. Beijing will have to rely on widespread use of artificial snow for the Winter Games and has said it will budget $1.5 billion for investment in Olympic villages, sports venues, and other infrastructure.
BERNAL TO SKIP WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS
BOGOTA: Tour de France winner Egan Bernal will skip next week’s Road World Championships in England, the cycling federation in his native Colombia said on Tuesday, without indicating the reason.
“The talented cyclist of Team Ineos decided to turn down the call-up” for the race in the Yorkshire town of Harrogate, the Colombian Cycling Federation said in a statement.
The 285-kilometre course for the World Championships road race on September 29 is not particularly hilly and did not seem ideally suited to mountain climbers like Bernal.
One of Bernal’s main rivals, Poland’s Michal Kwiatkowski, pulled out this week.