Long before the global pandemic upended sports and the world in general, the 2022 Winter Olympics faced unsettling problems.
Beijing ended up solving that problem, but only after four European cities thought about it and dropped out, mostly because of expense and lack of public support. In the end, it was a race between two authoritarian countries. The IOC narrowly chose China’s capital and its mostly bone-dry surrounding mountains over a bid from Kazakhstan. “It really is a safe choice,” IOC President Thomas Bach said after the balloting.
“This is one where you can do your absolute best but you kind of have to juggle your sanity and being able to perform at the Olympics, and not lose your mind beforehand,” U.S. moguls skier Hannah Soar said. — Human Rights. Led by the United States, a number of Western democratic countries are staging a diplomatic boycott of the Games to protest what the U.S. and human-rights groups have called the genocide of some 1 million Uyghurs in China’s far western Xinjiang province.
Participants will be placed in isolation if they test positive, and the stakes of a system that has not been clearly spelled out to everyone were on display when Belgian skeleton racer Kim Meylemans turned to social media Thursday and gave a tearful explanation of her situation. — Russia. President Vladimir Putin is expected to attend the opening ceremony in what some will view as an audacious bit of politicking on two fronts. With tensions escalating on the Ukraine border, this conjures memories of the 2014 Olympics in Putin’s home country, during which Russia invaded and took over the Ukrainian territory of Crimea.
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