It's the most wonderful time of every four years! The Winter Olympics!

The 2022 Winter Olympics are being hosted in Beijing and while a few of the events have already started, the Opening Ceremony will air on February 4 live early in the morning and rerun in primetime on NBC.

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So to be prepared, let's go over a few of this year's Olympic fun facts!

  • Team USA boasts 223 athletes, which is a Winter Olympics record!
  • 14 years ago Beijing hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics making Beijing the first city to host a Summer and Winter Olympics!
  • Five venues from the 2008 games have been repurposed for the 2022 games.
  • The 2022 games will use 25 venues in Beijing and the neighboring city of Zhangjiakou.
  • All the venues are powered with 100% renewable energy.
  • Zhangjiakou is about three hours from Beijing by car, however, China has an intercity railway, which is the world's first driverless high-speed railway, cutting the commute down to 47 minutes!
  • Bing Dwen Dwen the panda is the Beijing 2022 official mascot.
  • This is the most gender-equal Olympic Games ever. 2,900 athletes are expected to attend and 45.4% of them are women.
  • 91 countries are participating.
  • There are a record 109 events across 15 sports.
  • The 2022 Beijing Olympics have 7 new events:
    • Women's monobob- a solo bobsledding event
    • big air skiing
    • mixed team snowboard cross
    • mixed team aerials in freestyle skiing
    • mixed team relay in short-track speedskating
    • mixed team ski jumping

For a full schedule of events, click here.

Sources: (WalletHub / NPR / Wikipedia / Wikipedia / NBC Olympics / Team USA)

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