In 2022 sportspeople from all over the world are going to meet at the Games in Beijing. For the first time in history, they will be known as a single event, the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games Beijing 2022.  This concept of a single games is also taken through to a unique issue of a pair of postage stamps dedicated to both Olympians and Paralympians. The Games will take place in the Chinese year of the tiger and the stamps share this motif, making them a whole. This pair of postage stamps is another step in the establishment of closer cooperation between the SPC and the SOSC and their convergence.  

Beijing will host the thirteenth Paralympic Winter Games. From the 4th to 13th March 2022, 736 sportspeople will take part in 6 sports (para alpine skiing, para Nordic skiing – cross-country and biathlon, para snowboarding, wheelchair curling and para ice hockey) and medals will be awarded in 82 disciplines.

Slovak sportspeople will be there to defend the 11 medals (6 of them gold) that they won at the previous Games, at PyeongChang in 2008.  As all of the gold medals were won in para alpine skiing, Slovakia even led the medal rankings in this sport. With her four golds and a silver, Henrieta Farkašová, a visually impaired skier, was the first Slovak sportswoman to be the most successful participant of the Games! 

Slovak medal hopes in Beijing will again be centred around our para alpine skiers. Slovak wheelchair curlers will participate in the Paralympic Winter Games for the third games in a row, while for our para ice hockey players, who qualified through the Paralympic Qualifying Tournament, it will be their first appearance. The Paralympic stamp of the pair depicts a para ice hockey player. It will be the first time in the history of the Paralympic Winter Games that Slovakia will participate in two team competitions.  

Since1994 Slovak Paralympians have won, under the flag of an independent Slovakia, a total of 125 medals (39 gold, 42 silver and 44 bronze medals) at 14 Paralympic Games and Winter Paralympic Games.  We hope that they will succeed yet again in Beijing and extend their remarkable collection. 

 Ing. Roman Végh