With the Olympics being one of the biggest events worldwide, it comes as no surprise that there would be a handful of controversies. Controversies aren’t new to the Olympics, and this year was no exception. 

The biggest controversy this year is the US, UK, Canada, and a few other countries not sending any ministers or officials to attend the games in Beijing due to a diplomatic boycott due to China’s treatment of Uighur Muslims. 

According to the BBC, China is believed to have committed and continue to commit human rights abuses against the Uighur Muslims, including sending them to concentration camps to ‘reeducate’ them into leaving their religion. Estimates say about a million Muslims have been sent to camps and many more jailed. 

According to CNN, India also has a diplomatic boycott due to one of the torchbearers of the Olympics being a soldier that participated in a small battle between India and China near their border.

The next controversy involves 15-year-old Russian Olympic skater Kamila Valieva testing positive for doping. According to the NY Times, her Dec. 25 test came back positive for trimetazidine, a drug that helps patients with heart problems. However, she was still allowed to compete due to her technically testing negative on all drug tests during the Winter Olympics. 

The blame was mostly put on the laboratory that tested her because the results of her test came almost 50 days late. Valieva still received a ton of backlash, and finished 4th in an event she was projected to win gold.

Another controversy concerns US snowboarder Julia Marino withdrawing from the Big Air competition. She won the first medal for the US in the Slopestyle snowboarding event this year but withdrew from the big air snowboarding because the International Olympics Committee rejected her snowboard because it had the fashion company Prada’s logo on her board. The issue was that the IOC didn’t say anything about her board during her first event, and only told her to cover the logo on her board before her second event. 

According to the NY Post, however, an IOC official told Marino to tape over the Prada logo on her helmet before her first event. She Sharpied out the Prada logo, but injured her tailbone during practice. She said the Sharpied logo was distracting and caused her injury, and so Marino withdrew from the competition.

These are just some of the big controversies at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. Like all Olympics, contentions are not uncommon, but this one will definitely go down as one of the most disputed Olympics in recent times.