China '22, Week 2: Beijing Olympics on Thin Ice

The Winter Olympics in Beijing ended Sunday with the usual bombast and blather about how sports promotes peace and world harmony.  Which would sound even better if these Games hadn't been held in a totalitarian country during a pandemic.

But there they were, athletes from around the world competing in empty stadiums, getting tested for Covid-19 and its variants, shuffling from venue to venue to living quarters and back, without so much as moral support from back home or being able to say what they really think about the situation they're in.

Here's the final medal count:     

                        Gold            Silver            Bronze            Total

Norway              16                8                      13                  37

ROC                    6                12                     14                  32

Germany            12               10                       5                  27

Canada                4                  8                      14                 26

USA                      8                10                      7                   25  

• Kamila Valieva, the teenaged figure skater from the Russian Olympic Committee who was cleared to compete in the women's finals in spite of using a banned substance that she claimed was her grandfather's heart medication, turned in such a terrible performance at the final free skate that her coaches were colder to her than an Arctic front from Siberia.  Two of her ROC teammates won gold and silver, but didn't seem too happy about it considering the circumstances.  Unless the powers in figure skating helps fix the doping crisis and raise the age of skaters, we shouldn't call this the "Women's" Figure Skating Championships.
• Oh yes.  Because of the situation involving Valieva, the other participants in the Team Skating competition are still waiting for their medals.
• The biggest name to come out of these Olympics was Eileen Gu, a freestyle skier from the United States who chose to compete for China, her mother's homeland.
• In the NHL-less men's hockey tournament, Finland won its first-ever gold medal over the favored ROC team 2-1.  The Canadians won another women's hockey gold medal over their only rivals in the United States 3-2.
• Snow fell on the slopes in China.  The natural stuff, not the man-made kind that created some problems for skiers.
• NBC drew more than 100 million viewers for the Super Bowl.  They'll be lucky to get anywhere near that with Olympics coverage on the network, Peacock, USA Network and various other sources.  A lot of it wasn't their fault with the 14-hour time difference, lack of familiar sports and personalities, and the fact that it was in China.  But the decision to do the coverage from studios in Connecticut instead of on site, while understandable because of China's Covid policies, took all the starch out of being there.  Then again, we've gotten used to that stuff the past couple of years.

The torch has been passed to Milan and Cortina in Italy for 2026.  Unless something changes, the Olympic movement will continue to be run by governments who can pay the freight, organizations who can pay the International Olympic Committee to look the other way, and sponsors and networks who shell out billions to see which eyeballs are attracted to what they're selling.

In the end, though, it's still about athletes who want to compete at their best.  That will never change.

 

China '22, Week 1: More Scandals, Less Snow.

 The Winter Olympics in Beijing continued on its dreary pace with restrictions sucking the life out of it.  And that's without China doing all it can to try and eradicate the COVID-19 virus and its Omicron variant from within its borders.  In other news from the week:

• Reacting to worldwide disgust over their alleged treatment of Uyghurs, the Chinese cynically used an Uyghur skier to carry the Olympic flame for the opening ceremonies.
• What looked like silos from an abandoned nuclear power plant (which the Chinese tell us aren't really) were hard to miss during the freestyle skiing competition.  If this were Springfield, USA (hometown of "The Simpsons") instead of Beijing, plant owner Montgomery Burns would be in his office rubbing his hands and saying "Excellent!".  Nonetheless, it looks weird.
• What snow there is, by the way, is 100 percent man-made.  Just like your local ski slope.
• The scandals keep coming.  Kamila Valieva, a 15-year old figure skater from Russia (known as the Russian Olympic Committee for these Games), is currently allowed to compete in spite of testing positive for a banned substance.  It's the reason why the final results for Team Figure Skating have been delayed, and why her place in the Women's Figure Skating competition is in doubt.

We need to talk about Mikaela Shiffrin, the heir apparent to now-retired Lindsey Vonn as America's alpine skiing queen.  Pegged to win several medals in Beijing, she flamed out in her first two races by missing early gates.  After the second slipup, NBC cameras caught Shiffrin rolled up in a ball of misery out of bounds for several minutes while other skiers whizzed past her.  The question became:  Are we witnessing the next Simone Biles, whose legendary withdrawal from several gymnastic events at the Tokyo Olympics, put athletes and mental health front and center?  Turns out, no. Shiffrin completed her Super G run the following day without incident and without medals.  We'll see what happens next.

The medal count as of 2/13/ 22 reads like this (from ESPN.com):

NORWAY  Nine gold, five silver, seven bronze= 21

ROC           Four gold, five silver, eight bronze=17

GERMANY  Eight gold, five silver, one bronze=14

AUSTRIA  Four gold, six silver, four bronze=14

CANADA   One gold, four silver, nine bronze=14

U.S.              Six gold, five silver, one bronze=12 (tied for sixth with Netherlands)

NBC is, predictably, getting hammered in the TV ratings.  But they don't seem to be too concerned about it, because the numbers on streaming service Peacock and social media are trending upwards so far.  So in the end, this may not be the most watched Olympics ever.  Instead, this might be the most viewed ever.  We shall see.

Another week to go.  Who knows, maybe a war might start.

The Winter Olympics: China Being China

 The Winter Olympic games are underway in Beijing, China, six months after the Summer Games ended belatedly in Tokyo, Japan.  Beijing is hosting its second Olympics this century (the last in 2008), and is now the first city to have hosted both versions.

The COVID-19 virus, which has since mutated from variant to variant and continues to sicken and kill millions of people around the world, is again affecting the conduct of these Olympics.  Just like in Tokyo, the athletes who compete here will face venues with no spectators save for invited guests, extensive testing and social distancing.  Those who violate the rules are likely to remain guests of China until long after these Games are over.

China being China, not only will the government be cracking down on COVID, but also on foreign and domestic journalists and dissidents who don't stick to the script when it comes to human rights abuses, uprisings in Hong Kong and other sensitive topics.  The United States is leading a diplomatic boycott of these Games for those reasons--that is, send the athletes but not government officials,  But since so much of the world's economy revolves around China, you can't afford to piss them off too much.

As athletes from Russia are competing under the name ROC (Russian Olympic Committee) as punishment for alleged doping violations, President Vladimir Putin is risking a world war with a possible invasion of Ukraine.  Adding to the pressure is President Joe Biden's decision to send American troops near the Ukrainian border as an attempt to get Putin to back off.  Oh, and both sides still have enough nuclear missiles to blow each other up.

The National Hockey League, who you would think had wanted to come to China for the exposure that country could provide just like other North American sports leagues have, has once again begged off sending its players to the Olympics.  Because they've had problems scheduling games and keeping rosters together due to COVID, as well as balking at China's restrictions, the NHL decided to use its Olympic break on rescheduled games just to get its season back on track.  Which leaves the men's hockey competition with rosters full of whoever they could get, and possibly affect the quality of play.

As you watch skiiers, figure skaters, speed skaters, curlers and others on whatever video device you're watching from, keep in mind that the announcers calling the action is in a studio half a world away.  NBC, which has held the American TV rights to the Olympics since forever (1988, actually), moved most of its announcing staff to its sports headquarters in Connecticut to call games off monitors because of China's COVID policies.  They also might be walking a tightrope when it comes to honest appraisals of how China and the International Olympic Committee is behaving during these Games, to put it mildly.

The IOC has had a longer history of cozying up to dictators and oppressive governments than a certain former (and future?) President of the United States.  Germany 1936.  Russia 1980 and 2014.  China 2008 and 2022.  Promoting international brotherhood (or whatever the term is now) through sports has given way to the universal language of money, and we are the poorer for it.  The next few Olympiads will be held in what are now considered democracies:  France in 2024, Italy in '26, the United States in '28, and Australia in '32.

Let's all see what happens in China for the next few weeks, whether they're behaving themselves or if they're just being China.