The next few months are not likely to see a huge amount of action when it come to Winter Olympic sports in China. Beijing is very much in waiting mode for at least three main reasons: a celebration, a mourning and the Tokyo Olympics.
In this week’s look at all the latest news in the build-up to the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics:
- Waiting for Tokyo
- A political birthday party
- An ultramarathon in Gansu goes catastrophically wrong
- The latest boycott threats from around the world
- CNN’s selective timeline
- All the other features and stories of interest
Waiting for Tokyo
Firstly, and most obviously, everyone’s attention is already on the Tokyo Games – which don’t start until July 24 – to see how those Olympics are handled. From Beijing’s perspective, they will be looking primarily at pandemic-related issues so that they can adapt accordingly for their own Olympics in terms of what does and doesn’t work. Many doctors have advised against the holding of the Tokyo Olympics, but the IOC said this week the Games going ahead come hell or high water, and it would take something absolutely massive to prevent the Beijing Olympics from happening at this point. At a high level, some of the questions Beijing will be looking to Tokyo for answers include:
- What should we do if there are any COVID-19 outbreaks among Olympic participants?
- How can we best prevent cross-contamination, either between athletes, or between visitors and residents?
- What kind of competition “bubbles” work best?
- Can we handle overseas spectators?
- What should we do with regards to vaccination and quarantine guidelines?
I say “guidelines”, because, as I understand it, under IOC rules China cannot mandate athletes to either be vaccinated or to do quarantine (even though all entrants into China right now have to do a minimum of 14 days central quarantine, and sometimes more). But how this relates to the thousands of other less essential participants – coaches, officials, media etc – is currently unclear.
A Political Birthday Party
The second major thing that is causing Beijing to hit the pause button is the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party of China on July 1. Those of you reading this from overseas may wonder “What’s the big deal?” Well, as far as the government is concerned – and they are the ones calling the shots – it’s a huge deal, bigger than a typical western audience could even imagine. A significant birthday of a political party in the west would likely pass entirely unnoticed, but China will all but shut down for the best part of a week, with the country bathed in a sea of red flags. Expect to see as many of the hammer and sickle flags (below right) as the Chinese national ones, which can be a bit of a jarring sight for a western audience.
Suffice to say that the authorities will do everything within their considerable powers to avoid anything raining on the parade, so if sports events need to be scrapped to avoid even a semblance of “risk”, then that’s what will happen.
An Ultramarathon in Gansu Goes Catastrophically Wrong
In addition to the above, there’s another issue that is hindering sports events at the moment. There was race last weekend in the northwestern province of Gansu that took an awful, awful turn, as 21 runners in a 100km/60m ultramarathon – including five of the six leaders – died after unexpected weather and plunging temperatures made the mountain pass section of the course treacherous, stranding runners and hampering rescue efforts. But for the efforts of local herdsmen, the death toll from the Gansu ultramarathon could have been even higher.
The whole affair could – and should – have been avoided with proper preparations, race overnight and adequate rescue plans. I posted a thread on Twitter (linked below), which contains most of my thoughts, so I won’t go over that all here, but the reaction to that fateful race has been strong and predictable.
To give some context into the explosion of running in China over the past few years, we’ve gone from just 11 marathons and long-distance races in 2011 to 1,828 in 2019, before COVID-19 put a temporary halt to that.
As I predicted, as a direct result of the Gansu ultramarathon – which involved just 172 runners (a fraction of the 7 million participants in races in 2019) – we’re already seeing mass cancellations of events, and not just running races either, although more than 60 long-distance events have already been shelved.
In addition to motorsports events being scrapped (as pictured above), even a chess tournament in Chengdu fell foul of the latest restrictions. Coupled with the build-up to the Communist Party’s birthday on July 1, it’s a bit of a perfect storm in terms of hitting the pause button, and doesn’t exactly bode well for getting foreign athletes into China for test events later in the year ahead of next February’s Olympics. There’s still time for things to settle down after the summer, of course, but don’t expect much to happen until after the Tokyo Olympics have wrapped.
As an aside, it’s refreshing to see state media asking real questions about what happened in the ill-fated Gansu ultramarathon race and why, while also exposing deep-rooted issues within the industry, as evidenced by this piece from the Global Times. You’ll never see any criticism of the central authorities from state media, but it’s nice at least to see underneath the censorship occasionally, even if more critical pieces like this arise from a deliberate strategy to direct public anger away from Beijing.
Boycott Watch
China’s official defense strategy continues to be out in force. Take this letter, for example, from Yin Haigang, Counsellor and Spokesperson of the Chinese Embassy in the Bahamas, that was published in the Nassau Tribune. Yin hits all the highlights about “political neutrality” and how “the politicization of sports is against the spirit of the Olympic Charter” (omitting to mention, of course, that the IOC is as political an organization as they come). But the Bahamas has never even had a single Winter Olympic athlete in its history, so for Yin to be writing this from the warmth of the Caribbean, you can be sure that a mandate has been sent out to Chinese diplomats worldwide to fight back against the “anti-China boycott” narrative.
Meanwhile, former US Ambassador to the UN and future presidential hopeful Nikki Haley, has again been talking about China (see her previous comments here), saying:
“We should absolutely boycott the Chinese Olympics. Other allies and friends should do it with us.”
However, her understanding of quite how much those friends and allies have pushed for a boycott seems, well, limited, but expect these noises to continue out of Washington DC for a while. A reminder, too, about the US Innovation and Competition Act, which includes a clause about an Olympic boycott and about which I wrote here, appears to be gathering steam and making its way through the Senate on its way towards ratification in the House.
See also: China’s policies are cause for an Olympics boycott [The San Diego Union-Tribune], Boycotting the 2022 Olympics [The Week], ‘What About Beijing?’ Manga Bares the Soul of the Debate to Cancel Tokyo Olympics [Japan Forward], with image below
CNN’s Selective Timeline
CNN’s factsheet on the 2022 Olympics includes this timeline:
- Jul 31, 2015 – Beijing chosen as host city.
- Dec 30, 2019 – High-speed train connecting the three Olympic clusters (Beijing, Yanqing and Zhangjiakou) goes into operation.
- Mar 4, 2020 – 12 senators submit resolution to move the Games away from China.
- Feb 2, 2021 – A letter from 180 activist groups calls for diplomatic boycott.
And that’s it, folks. Just those four points spanning six years. It doesn’t really need (or deserve) much comment, except to say that CNN’s Editorial Research team could do a lot worse than subscribing to this website.
Other Stories and Links
- Testing dried blood spots a ‘very important step’ in anti-doping for 2020 and 2022 [AFP]
- Check out which curling teams have qualified for Beijing 2022 [Olympic.com]
- China hosts domestic 7s in the wake of Olympic Games [Planet 7s]
- Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics volunteers learn sign language in Hebei [Global Times]
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