Olympic Games: It’s always something

Among the benefits to host the Olympic Games is to create national pride and international stature, but the headlines leading into the competition tend to focus on the negative. Spending billions to hurt tourism… hardly makes sense.

Sailing was caught in the news before the Rio de Janiero 2016 Olympics with horrid images of pollution on Guanabara Bay. But not as well known was the water quality in Qindao for the Beijing 2008 Olympics. Sewer pipe on the race course. Sickness among athletes. Algae and seaweed on Fusan Bay. Having government controlled media was pretty handy then.

With Beijing to host the upcoming 2022 Olympics, nations having been educating athletes on Chinese cyber surveillance, including the danger of electronic devices being infected with spyware. Some nations are requiring their representatives to not bring mobile devices and computers to avoid spyware that would extract private information or track future activity.

Now the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) is telling athletes to be extremely cautious when eating Chinese meat at Beijing 2022. The fear is how the meat could be contaminated with banned substances that would disqualify competitors.

The WADA warning comes after the German National Anti-Doping Agency advised its athletes to avoid all Chinese meat and to seek an alternative.

A WADA spokesperson said its guidelines for athletes to “only to eat at places given the all-clear by event organizers” should not be an issue as competitors will eat the majority of their meals within the Athletes’ Village.

The ‘good news-bad news’ is how all Olympic participants will be unable to access the outside world for the duration of their time in Beijing as part of the “closed-loop management system“, meaning they cannot visit restaurants where contaminated meat could be sold.

Once within the Olympic bubble, Beijing 2022’s “closed-loop management system” by the Chinese Government seeks to combat the threat of the Omicron coronavirus variant. Good times!