Winter Olympics

Is football hooliganism on its way back?

26 February 2022 9:00 am

Forty-odd years ago a friend, a Liverpool supporter, somewhat unwisely took his girlfriend to Elland Road for a Leeds match…

Unmasking 'panda diplomacy'

23 February 2022 5:39 am

The star of the Beijing Winter Olympics wasn’t an athlete: it was Bing Dwen Dwen, the spacesuit-clad panda mascot. It…

Are the Winter Olympics suffering the effects of climate change?

12 February 2022 9:00 am

No snow The pistes are covered with artificial snow and the hillsides are bare. Are the Winter Olympics a victim…

China breaks new records in the Surveillance Olympics

9 February 2022 2:26 am

Never before have the participants in a major sporting event been so closely monitored as in this Winter Olympics in…

Frozen: can China escape its zero-Covid trap?

5 February 2022 9:00 am

How China got stuck in a zero-Covid trap

China is right to laugh at the west

10 December 2021 6:54 am

Signs of the enervating weakness of the west’s governing elites aren’t that hard to find but the case of the…

The big chill: Allison Janney as LaVona Golden

I, Tonya is not quite a gold-medal masterpiece

3 March 2018 9:00 am

Films about the Winter Olympics don’t grow on conifers. Twenty-five years ago there was Cool Runnings about the Jamaican bobsleigh…

Are these the coldest Winter Olympics ever?

17 February 2018 9:00 am

Museums of curiosity The former culture secretary Ed Vaizey suggested that there are quite enough museums in Britain, and that…

This Winter Olympics, don’t knock our fearless Fridge Kids

27 January 2018 9:00 am

At this time of the year, well-meaning folk of otherwise sound mind start to get very sniffy about the impending…

Downton Abbey on skis: Eddie the Eagle reviewed

2 April 2016 9:00 am

I once forced some pals on a skiing holiday to spend an afternoon off the slopes watching Chalet Girl. Suffice…

Any other business: The friends of Putin taking home gold from the Sochi Olympics

22 February 2014 9:00 am

Imagine if the BBC’s excitable commentators had been asked to cover the building of Sochi’s facilities, rather than the Winter…

In defence of the BBC’s Sochi commentators

22 February 2014 9:00 am

You can trust the BBC to behave like a leaf blown by any breeze, but even that spineless leviathan (if…

Barometer: When Britain was good at the Winter Olympics

8 February 2014 9:00 am

Our first winter Hopes will not be high for a big haul of British medals in Sochi, but we have…

Sochi Olympics: Why picking on gays has backfired so horribly for Vladimir Putin

1 February 2014 9:00 am

Russia’s thuggish President has picked on the wrong minority

Five reasons to be cheerful about British sport (yes, even the cricket)

25 January 2014 9:00 am

James Cook’s third voyage as an English captain ended in disaster, stabbed to death and disembowelled by a pack of…

Taki: Stephen Fry and the gay lobby should cool it over the Winter Olympics

31 August 2013 9:00 am

Gstaad I’ve met Stephen Fry twice in my life, both times long ago. The first time at a dinner given…