Brutal cold, high winds pose problems for high-flying Olympians: ‘It sucks’

ZHANGJIAKOU — The cold may not bother Olympians, but the wind sure will.

As the Winter Olympics officially kicked off Saturday, wind out of the west raked the Games’ mountain venues in Yanqing and Zhangjiakou. Temperatures lingered in the single digits for much of the day, and wind chills dropped those temps into the double-digits below zero. The combination has proved wicked for everyone from skiers to snowboarders to biathletes.

This isn’t “wrap up in a scarf” cold or “wear a heavier coat” cold. This is “knife right through your skin” cold, “I never really loved you” cold, “will I ever be warm again?” cold.

"It sucks,” said Team USA’s Jamie Anderson, a medal favorite in several snowboarding disciplines. “It’s hard to keep your core temperature warm, and then doing tricks feels a little bit more intimidating. You're just, like, a little bit stiff. But we can do it.”

The wind is a challenge all its own, disrupting the precise aim of biathletes and disrupting the in-air balance of snowboarders, skiers and jumpers. Athletes will often joke about getting “blown off the mountain,” but it’s not so funny when you’re in midair and a gust of wind that started howling somewhere over Mongolia, hundreds of miles away, is shoving into you like a cold, punishing wave.

Winds are gusting around 20 mph and temperatures are spending a lot of time around zero in the Zhangjiakou cluster, site of snowboarding, ski jumping, biathlon, cross country and other events. At those temperatures, frostbite can set in on exposed skin in less than half an hour. Winter sports athletes generally don’t have much skin exposed to the elements, but depending on the sport, not every athlete can bundle up against the cold.

Biathletes, for instance, are “generally racing in Lycra with long underwear underneath,” U.S. Biathlon CEO Max Cobb said. “The wind blows right through that.”

Biathlon: Shooting, skiing, freezing

Biathletes are especially vulnerable to plunging temperatures and high winds because of the nuances of their discipline, which combines cross-country skiing and shooting. High winds can affect the trajectory of the bullet, a significant impact when biathletes are trying to hit a target the size of a golf ball from 50 meters away.

That, and there’s the small matter of the trigger finger. "Athletes need to be able to feel the trigger,” Cobb said. “With the trigger finger at cold temperatures, especially with the wind, that can become a real issue.”

“A lot of our races in central Europe have been quite warm,” said Team USA’s Deedra Irwin. “We haven't had that many races below 15 degrees in the past two or three years. I see that as a trend of the climate changing and winters getting warmer. But we're a little out of practice for this, blustery, cold, frigid conditions.”

“We are putting on as many layers as we can, but still everything is freezing. You can see everyone waving their hands, jumping on the spot. It is cold for everyone,” says Belarusian biathlete Hanna Sola. “It would be great if the starts were a bit earlier because when the sun goes down, the chill amplifies so much that it is unbearable even to ski.”

Snowboard: Walls and curtains against the wind

The snowboarding venue boasts a unique architectural element: a replica of the nearby Great Wall, carved out of snow. It’s decorative and eye-catching, and in theory it will work in concert with nearby curtains — yes, curtains — to block the wind. In practice? Not so much.

“The wind is kind of an issue,” Anderson said, “but thankfully it's been kind of a crosswind so it's not really blowing you down. It just scares you.”

Some snowboarders, being snowboarders, are looking at the wind as a grand dare. "The winds are a bit tricky. You can feel it sometimes when you're on the course, but not enough to throw you off your game. You just have to really adapt,” said New Zealand’s Zoi Sadowski-Synnott. "The wind is all good, but as soon as it becomes gusty, that's when things get a bit more challenging."

Every athlete has a strategy for dealing with the cold and the wind, and some have shared their secrets this week. “When you prepare yourself for a competition in such strong cold and wind, you can’t really train for it,” says Norwegian biathlete Tarjei Boe, “so I’ve got probably 20 pairs of gloves in my bag with all different possible combinations of layers and [shooting] fingers, with and without electricity.”

Australian cross-country skier Seve de Campo first got a sense of the temperature at the Opening Ceremony. “It was a shock when I walked out into the stadium and the wind was blowing into my face,” he said. “I had enough layers on and a little bit of sunscreen, which works for high UV in Australia but also for the wind chill, so that’s a little secret that you can have from me.”

Biathletes’ rifles won’t freeze in the cold, but ballistics are an issue, and the team mixes and matches ammunition and rifles based on the conditions.

“We, and most teams, do a lot of cold chamber testing,” Cobb said. “We go into a refrigerated space with rifles and different lots of ammunition to see which one groups the best.” (i.e. has the most precise targeting.) “A great grouping will be the size of your fingernail on your index finger. If the grouping is bigger than a golf ball, you wouldn’t use that ammunition.”

Warmer temperatures are ahead — “warm” being a relative term in the Winter Olympics, of course — with the most hospitable days of the coming week coinciding with the runs of marquee snowboard talents like Chloe Kim and Shaun White. They’ll compete in temperatures just under freezing, with lows around 10 degrees. Not exactly summertime weather, granted, but a whole lot more tolerable than what’s carving through China right now.