The corona pandemic remains a dominant topic at the Beijing Winter Olympics.

Before the opening on Friday evening (1.30 p.m. CET in the FAZ live ticker for the Olympics, on ZDF and on Eurosport), further cases were added.

In ice hockey, the women from the USA and Finland had to go to an involuntary overtime.

The German figure skaters made a false start in the team competition.

Corona:

Before the games started, other participants tested positive for the corona virus.

As the organizers announced on Friday, 21 infected people were discovered in 72,425 corona tests the day before.

According to this, 14 of the infections were found in athletes, supervisors and other Olympic accredited persons at Beijing Airport on arrival on the same day.

The remaining seven infected are people in the Olympic bubble who have traveled before.

The total number of corona cases has risen to a total of 308 since January 23.

According to the information, a total of 11,963 people traveled to the games via Beijing Airport between January 23 and February 3.

Video evidence:

There was a curiosity at the women's ice hockey tournament.

At the end of the match between Finland and the USA, the referees disallowed a correctly scored goal by the Finns with 2:20 minutes left - and only recognized this error after studying the video images after the game.

When the game was officially over and the teams faced each other on the ice to shake hands, the referees decided that another two minutes and 20 seconds would have to be replayed.

However, Finland did not manage to turn the tide, it remained at 2:5.

Hope:

After his positive corona test, the German figure skater Nolan Seegert still has his sights set on pair skating. The 29-year-old Berliner wrote on Friday on social networks that he would do everything to be able to compete in the pair skating competition with his sporting partner Minerva Hase as planned on February 18 and 19. The duo missed the start in the team competition before the opening ceremony of the Olympic Winter Games in Beijing. Seegert was the first German athlete to test positive for the corona virus in Beijing and is in an isolation hotel.

Medal hunt:

Dirk Schimmelpfennig, head of competitive German sport, has no doubts that Norway will once again be number one in the medal count at the Winter Olympics in Beijing.

“Norway is the measure of all things.

It is the leading winter sports nation,” said the Chef de Mission.

The Scandinavian country won 39 medals in Pyeongchang in 2018.

Germany followed in second place with 31 plaques, ahead of Canada (29).