MOSCOW, November 30. /TASS/. The national team of Russian speed skaters has arrived in the United States for the 2021/2022 ISU Speed Skating World Cup stage later this week, Varvara Barysheva, the executive director of the Russian Speed Skating Union (RSSU), told TASS.
The US stage of the tournament is slated for December 3-5 in Salt Lake City, Utah, and is viewed as one of the key qualifying stages for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in China’s Beijing.
Speaking to a TASS correspondent early on Tuesday, Barysheva said that the team arrived in the United States and seven hours later was set to take a local flight to Salt Lake City.
"The issue regarding the entry permission has been resolved with the assistance of our Russian partners and we are very grateful to them," she said.
Barysheva announced in early October that the Russian speed skating team’s athletes would be waiting for their US entry visas at the Consulate General’s Office in Warsaw in order to participate in the American stage of the 2021/2022 ISU Speed Skating World Cup in December. She said at that time that the majority of the team’s participants did not have US entry visas.
The 2021/2022 ISU Speed Skating World Cup kicked off with the stage at Poland’s Ice Arena Tomaszow Mazowiecki on November 12-14.
2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games in Beijing
The 2022 Winter Olympic Games in the Chinese capital of Beijing are scheduled to be held between February 4 and 20, while the Paralympic Winter Games will be held on March 4-13.
During the 128th IOC session in Kuala Lumpur on July 31, 2015, Beijing was chosen to host the 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games making the Chinese capital the first city ever to host both the Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games (in 2008) as well as the Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games (in 2022).
Beijing won the right to host the 2022 Olympics and Paralympics in a tight race, beating Kazakhstan’s Almaty in 2015, by chalking up 44 votes against its rival’s 40.