Toxic Beijing Games did lasting damage to the long-term survival of Olympics | Opinion
BEIJING – When future generations look back at these Winter Olympics in Beijing, will they do so with a grimace, seeing them with the kind of embarrassment associated with times when people didn’t know any better?
Or will they be seen with regret, the Games that sounded the death knell for the Olympics?
China’s ugly record of human rights abuses, coupled with its silencing of three-time Olympian Peng Shuai after she said she’d been sexually assaulted by a former top Chinese official, made these Beijing Olympics tough to stomach even before they began. The International Olympic Committee, rather than fostering the inspirational and high-minded ideals it professes, was seen as complicit in using the Games to sports-wash atrocities.
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The disgust was compounded once the Olympics were underway. A 15-year-old was left to twist in the wind, a victim of the incompetence and cowardice of IOC president Thomas Bach and all the other Olympic leaders who long ago decided that protecting the riches the Olympics affords them is worth more than protecting the Olympics themselves.
“There have been other ebbs in the past when the Olympic movement was in a lot of trouble. The mid-1970s through the late 1980s. Then there was the rise with a rather uncritical embrace of the Olympics as the solution to all kinds of international problems. Now we’re seeing another ebb,” David Black, a professor at Dalhousie University whose areas of expertise include the politics of sports and governance, said even before the Games.
“Whether the ebb is reversible is impossible to know at this stage. But there’s been a lot of damage done to the idea of the Olympics,” Black added. “Time will tell. But it certainly is in a challenging moment, and (IOC leaders) are going to have to think carefully about its values.”
Beauty and inspiration still abound at the Olympics. How could you not watch in awe as American cross country skier Jessie Diggins, so sick with food poisoning a day earlier that “pretty much everything was coming right out of me,” willed herself to a silver medal in the 30-kilometer? How could you not be moved by a Latvian speedskater allowing an American whose skates had gotten delayed in transit to use his?
How could you not marvel at Norwegian biathlete Marte Olsbu Roeiseland, who won gold in three of her six events and bronzes in two others? Or Swedish speedskater Nils Van der Poel, who smashed the world record in the 10,000 meters on his way to his second gold medal in Beijing?
But while the physical feats of the athletes make the Games worth saving, it is the frailties of the people who run them that could be their ruin.
China’s atrocities, and the IOC’s willingness to gloss over them, only faded from the spotlight at the Beijing Olympics because of the doping scandal involving Russian figure skating phenom Kamila Valieva.
There was a direct throughline from Bach and the IOC’s coddling of Russia following its brazen state-sponsored doping scheme to rig the medal count at the Sochi Olympics and Valieva’s case. Had Russia been punished appropriately in 2016, or 2018 or 2019, Valieva would never even have been in Beijing.
Had any of the organizations whose sole purpose is to ensure fair and clean competition done its job, she’d never have skated in the team competition, let alone the women’s event, in the first place. Had any of the adults in Valieva’s orbit or the Olympic movement treated her like the child she is rather than a commodity, she wouldn’t have been sobbing in front of the world following her implosion on the ice, suffering God knows how much lasting trauma.
“You cannot speak of such an effect you are mentioning, because the pure fact is that this is following the rule of law,” Bach said when asked if Valieva’s case had done permanent damage to the Olympics.
“When people get the right distance to what happened, the only attitude you can take if you want to ensure fair treatment of everybody, regardless of passport, of history, whatever – there’s only one choice: to follow the rule of law, even if you’re not necessarily happy with a decision,” Bach said. “In the interest of the overall international sport system, there is no other choice.”
But IOC leaders have created these rules of law to protect themselves, not the Olympics. They want all the benefits of the Games – the three- and four-figure per diems they can never spend because they stay at five-star hotels and are provided gourmet meals by the host cities – without having to do the hard, sometimes messy work that would keep the Olympics above reproach.
Like keeping the Olympics out of the hands of authoritarian regimes that will use them as a propaganda tool. Installing real guardrails to ensure the playing field is as level as it can possibly be. Treating the athletes as equal partners rather than bit players.
“We’re going to remember the way these Games were used to bolster two different authoritarian governments,” said Noah Hoffman, a two-time U.S. Olympian in cross-country skiing who now serves on the board of Global Athlete.
“These issues for athletes are not going away,” Hoffman warned. “Athletes are understanding how imperative it is that they hold the IOC accountable, and have control over their sport and their careers. Changes are coming.”
But will those changes be in time to save the Olympics?
In the United States, at least, ratings for the Beijing Games were abysmal, with some fans who didn't watch saying they were turned off by the moral bankruptcy of the IOC. Can we still be sure the Olympics will be here in another 125 years? Or were the Beijing Games so toxic the Olympics couldn’t survive?
When we ask whether these Olympics were worth it, what will the answer be?
Follow Paste BN Sports columnist Nancy Armour on Twitter @nrarmour.