2022 Beijing Winter Olympics Games, ended with a splendid closing ceremony. Well, what are the leavings of such 16 days adventure?
There are no need paragraphs to summarize the Turkey’s winter Olympics history even if the details include stories. Turkey that represented by 98 athletes in 17 Olympics throughout the adventure started in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in 1936 doesn’t win any medal while was going to Beijing in 2022. Ski runners Sabahattin Oğlago and Kelime Çetinkaya, who managed to compete in the Olympics four times each, had the most spectacular statistics so far. It’s a stability for our country that doesn’t not yet have a concrete winter sports ecole to send athletes incessantly since 1984 Sarajevo. The medal yearning has continued in the last plays when the capital city of China is the first city that organizes both summer and winter Olympics. To be honest, we did not have a candidate for the podium in any branch. However, the summit organization of the sport, which is squeezed into two weeks every four years, managed to give sweet palpitations to our hearts. The address of excitement was two branches that we looked at from afar before…
One of the greatest legacies left behind by the 2011 Erzurum Universiade, which is seen as the milestone of winter sports in Turkey, was the candidate athletes who believed that they could do a sport like ski jumping, which had seemed foreign until then, at an international level. Fatih Arda İpçioğlu was among those who watched the jumps made by Faik Yüksel, the current national team coach, in the competition. Being the first Olympic ski jumping competitor in the country’s history in 2018 Pyeongchang, participating in the prestigious Four Hills Tournament in the current FIS World Cup season and getting his first points at this level, İpçioğlu waved the flag he received from his trainer with firsts. Its historic season would also continue in Beijing. Our athlete, who qualified in both normal and wide hill categories, could not compete in the final, but he inspired him with his presence on the biggest stage. The “Flying Turk” now had its own page in our Olympic history.
We were represented for the first time in short track speed skating, which is a fun to watch, extremely dynamic and high-action branch. Our young 20 years old athlete Furkan Akar gained such right with his performance in the quota competitions he participated in the Netherlands. Akar who contests 1000 meters distance was 2nd in the first qualifying series, in quarter final he was first one but He was third in the semi-finals and failed to qualify for the A final. Despite these two rounds he went through and the second place he took in the B finals meant the Olympic sixth, which was Turkey’s biggest success in the history of the winter games. Moreover, considering Furkan’s age and potential, there is no reason not to expect more from the future.
We had other athletes performing on the Olympic stage, one of the places where the cliché “The important thing is not to win, but to participate” has a real meaning. We applauded Yunus Emre Fırat, Ayşenur Duman and Ceren Dursun in ski running, and Berkin Usta and Özlem Çarıkçıoğlu in alpine skiing. As a result, another Olympics, with its bitterness and sweetness, brought its curtains down. After 16 days when Norway, the most successful country in the history of the Games, topped the medal rankings, heavyweights such as the USA and Germany were not deceived, and the host Chinese athletes did well, all eyes were on 2026 Milan Cortina. This time, to meet at the cold and white summits of Europe, to dream again and then maybe talk about the firsts…
