Olympics 2022: Belgium sends 19 athletes to Beijing
The Belgians are involved in biathlon (Florent Claude, Thierry Langer, Tom Lahaye-Goffart, César Beauvais and Lotte Lie), bobsleigh (An Vannieuwenhuyse and Sara Aerts), skeleton (Kim Meylemans), alpine skiing (Armand Marchant, Sam Maes and Dries Van den Broecke), cross-country skiing (Thibaut De Marre), snowboarding (Evy Poppe), figure skating (Loena Hendrickx), speed skating (Bart Swings, Mathias Vosté and Sandrine Tas), short-track (Hanne and Stijn Desmet) . Olav Spahl will be the head of mission in the Chinese capital.
The Belgian delegation planned 22 athletes in 2018, in Pyeongchang, the largest black-yellow-red delegation since the Garmisch Games in 1936, where 27 Belgians were present.
Bart Swings won the silver medal in the mass start (mass-start) in speed skating four years ago in South Korea. He won the sixth Belgian medal at the Winter Games, the first since the Nagano Games in 1998 with Bart Veldkamp’s bronze. Micheline Lannoy and Pierre Baugniet, gold medalist in figure skating in 1948, in St-Moritz, are the only Belgians to have climbed to the highest step of the podium at the Winter Games. Belgium also has two silver medals and three bronze medals.