Japan’s Ruki Tobita catches air on the slopestyle course ahead of the 2022 Winter Olympics, Thursday, Feb. 3, 2022, in Zhangjiakou, China. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
Ben Frederickson is a sports columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. You can follow him on Twitter (Ben_Fred), Instagram (benfredpd) and Facebook (BenFredPD).
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The results are in.
They are overwhelming.
Bad beat good, and gloom lapped the field.
The best thing I can say about the Beijing Games is that they will be over after Sunday’s closing ceremony.
Let’s get our athletes home safely, and score this edition of the Winter Games as a lopsided loss for the International Olympic Committee.
Where to start?
Another Russian doping scandal ruined the women’s figure skating competition and highlighted the IOC’s unwillingness to hold Russian athletes and their coaches accountable for repeated rule-breaking.
This wasn’t your normal case of cheating, either. Women’s skater Kamila Valieva is just 15 years old. She’s a child. So, there was no joy to be found when the favorite to win melted down in her final competition after a positive test for a banned substance. Her coach scolded her in front of the world after she fell apart on the ice. It was hard to watch. It was a fitting unofficial finale for an edition of the Games that can be described the same way.
Pandemic protocols were not something to be followed for Olympians. They were something to be feared. Photos of hazmat suits and quarantine horror stories told on social media seemed to circulate as often as images of Olympic glory. The “closed-loop system” seems to have kept COVID-19 locked out, but there was a cost. Canadian snowboarder Mark McMorris told reporters it was, “kinda like a sports prison.”
Underscoring everything was the IOC’s inability to stop China from turning the Games into political propaganda despite China’s insistence that route would not be taken.
Chinese President Xi Jinping hosted Russian president Vladimir Putin, who appears to be itching for war, during the opening ceremony.
A spokesman for the Beijing organizing committee slammed Taiwan’s status as a self-governing island.
A Uyghur athlete was selected to be a torchbearer for the opening ceremony. The decision was interpreted as a jab from China to the countries and organizations that have condemned China’s civil rights abuses of Uyghur people.
One of those countries would be ours.
The State Department in 2021 declared genocide allegations against China for repression of Uyghur Muslims and other minorities. The issue was the primary reason the U.S. announced a diplomatic boycott of the Games.
“Since 2017, authorities in Xinjiang have rounded up hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs, a largely Muslim ethnic minority group, and sent them to detention centers where they are taught Mandarin Chinese and Chinese political ideology,” reported NPR’s Emily Freng earlier this month. “Camp detainees have reported being forced to work in factories during their detention or after they are released. The children of those detained or arrested are often sent to state boarding schools, even when relatives are willing to take them in.”
Yan Jiarong, a spokeswoman for the Beijing 2022 organizing committee, dismissed claims of humans-rights violations as “lies.”
Meanwhile American athletes had been warned before their arrival to refrain from speaking out or participating in any sort of demonstrations that could be viewed as offensive, for the sake of their safety.
“I would say to our athletes, ‘You’re there to compete. Do not risk incurring the anger of the Chinese government, because they are ruthless,’” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Feb. 3 during a Congressional-Executive Commission on China hearing. “I know there is a temptation on the part of some to speak out while they are there. I respect that. But, I also worry about what the Chinese government might do: to their reputations, to their families. So again, participate, let us celebrate from abroad and don’t risk thinking that there are any good intentions on the part of the Chinese – the People’s Republic of China government, because there are none.”
I don’t know about you, but American athletes being muzzled out of fear gets me a lot more agitated than a rapper dropping to a knee during a Super Bowl halftime show.
So, no, I don’t blame you if you were not feeling warm and fuzzy every time the Olympics intro music played on NBC.
Athletes who went to compete in Beijing should not be condemned. They spent years training for the opportunity, and they overcame the pandemic’s crippling curveball to stay on track. They didn’t get to pick where these Winter Games took place.
I also understand that no version of the Games is perfect. Every round has its flaws and political stress points. A big part of the beauty of the Games is that these issues are, at least for a period of time, bridged so we can come together to celebrate the unifying power of sport and competition, sacrifice and success. The bridge didn’t get completed this time around. It fell through.
Nathan Chen’s miraculous gold medal in men’s figure skating, America’s favorite “old man” Nick Baumgartner winning a snowboarding gold medal at age 40, and the other highs could not overcome the lows.
A glance at the TV ratings, which are on pace for record lows, suggests Americans tuned out.
When the closing ceremony is looked forward to more than the opening one, it was one bad edition of the Olympics.
A nightly look at the day’s top sports stories, and a first look at the topics St. Louis fans will be talking about tomorrow.
Ben Frederickson is a sports columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. You can follow him on Twitter (Ben_Fred), Instagram (benfredpd) and Facebook (BenFredPD).
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Japan’s Ruki Tobita catches air on the slopestyle course ahead of the 2022 Winter Olympics, Thursday, Feb. 3, 2022, in Zhangjiakou, China. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
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