After 15 days of triumphs and defeats, the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics will draw to a close with the Closing Ceremony.
Australian viewers will be able to catch the event live and free on Channel Seven and streaming on 7plus on Sunday, February 20.
The ceremony will be held at the Bird’s Nest stadium and is set to begin at 8 pm Beijing time, which is 11 pm AEDT.
This will be followed by the Winter Paralympics from March 4 to 13.
While the Opening Ceremony saw athletes walk in country by country, the Closing Ceremony will see the athletes walking in en masse.
Once it has begun, the medals from the last events of the Games are typically presented to the winners during the Closing Ceremony.
After this, the Olympic flag will be lowered and the flag of the next host country is raised. The current host country, China, will have their flag flown next to the flag of the next Winter Olympics hosts, Italy. The ceremonial flag handover will see the Olympic flag passed to the mayors of the Italian cities of Milan and Cortina-D’Ampezzo, ahead of them hosting the 2026 Olympic Winter Games.
Thomas Bach, International Olympic Committee President will then declare the Games closed and extinguish the Olympic flame.
Speaking to Mediaweek, Seven’s Kurt Burnette said that the Winter Games is about creating momentum for the rest of the year, and Seven has achieved that with strong ratings across the two-week event.
“This is my fourth Winter Olympics and each February that they come around what you want to do is have some good momentum coming out of Summer, which we have. You always want to kick off the year as strong as you possibly can and that’s what we’ve done with the Winter Olympics which has provided massive growth while also dominating all the key demographics every night. Our objective is to create the best possible marketing platform for our advertisers and ourselves. We have been really successful from an advertising point of view with a big audience uplift which means we can promote our next slate of shows coming through such as Dancing with the Stars, SAS, and The Voice as well as continuing our leadership in news content.”
See More: Hot Start: How the Winter Olympics will help Seven win the year