The pandemic Olympics have reached their halfway point — and the real world is breaking into the loop

Opinion

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This article was published 12/02/2022 (1330 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BEIJING Under the cooling towers, someone threw their gloves into the crowd. Maybe it was the Norwegian, or the Swede, celebrating an Olympic medal in big air skiing under the dead monuments of a decommissioned steel mill. The mill, apparently, was a major polluter, so it was good it was dead. Unlike the 2008 Games here, the skies over Beijing have been clear and blue, all the way.

But there are storms. Under the towers, shortly after the gloves landed, security staff closed in and disinfection began. The fans here are not part of the Games-encasing closed loop: they’re in the venues but kept apart. So the gloves were considered radioactive, and Games staff set to work disinfecting chairs, hands, even purses. They spray Olympic hotel parking lots with disinfectant here. In China, perhaps you can’t be too careful.

These Olympics have truly traveled to a strange place, and we are now halfway through the enclosed pandemic Games. At an Olympics every day feels like a lifetime, and this one more than most. There is little time outside: maybe at some venues, or waiting for a bus, or in the dirt-and-leafless tree park across from the Main Media Centre, or the bus transfer parking lot halfway up the mountains where people get stranded in the cold.

Food is often dispiriting unless you’re at one of the better hotels. (The Star, somehow, is at one of those. None of this is a complaint.) It’s not much better for the athletes, who are making a brave show of it, on and off the field of play, despite being lonely or sad. Quarantine was a disaster for some: there were complaints about the food, the wireless, the lack of training gear, and organizers vowed to fix it. The mountain venues may as well be on the moon. It’s a tough Games for everyone.

But beyond the sports, which are always the heart of the Games, there is the context. China came in carrying its cultural erasure of the Uyghurs in Western China, along with other suffocating policies, and cynically chose an Uyghur skier with one international medal ever to co-light the torch at the opening ceremony, citing her achievements: that skier was dropped from the competition roster after not being fast enough. Meanwhile, Tariq Panja of the New York Times noted that wine produced in the Uyghur region was on the menu at the International Olympic Committee’s VIP Olympic Club. Even in a closed loop, the IOC’s aristocrats must experience the local culture.

Humans become accustomed to their surroundings, but some things break through. The spectacle of 15-year-old Kamila Valieva as the doping face of these Games is a tragedy; she crashed her spectacular jumps at practice, is awaiting summary judgment, and seems to be crumbling under that weight. Some Russian media members have been confronting Western journalists over the Valieva affair and more.

Meanwhile, in the real world Russia seems to be preparing to invade Ukraine, as they did after hosting the 2014 Olympics, so the real world broke into the loop. Ukrainian skeleton athlete Vladyslav Heraskevych stashed a piece of paper in his boot and pulled it out after a race and it said, No War In Ukraine. Heraskevych told The Associated Press, “Like any normal people, I don’t want war. I want peace in my country, and I want peace in the world. It’s my position, so I fight for that. I fight for peace.”

It was one man, trying to make his voice heard. At the opening ceremony, Russian President Vladimir Putin seemed to be pretending to fall asleep just as Ukraine’s athletes were introduced, marching behind their flag.

More than anything, these Games are a culmination of the IOC’s descent into the world’s authoritarian regimes, though Los Angeles 2028 isn’t guaranteed to be a joyous return to North American democracy, either. Admittedly, there are brute benefits. Beyond the incredible dedication to surface disinfectant — along with testing, tracing, and isolation — the Games are controlling even Omicron, with under 10 new cases per day in this imprisoned village, though the Russian women’s hockey team has been a notable outlier. There is still joy from the athletes, because the human spirit is still what the Olympics are designed to monetize; it’s the best product there is to sell.

But there’s a forbidding feeling in here that extends past food, past fresh air, past the confines that keep tens of thousands of humans pacing their prison yard, doing their best. I keep thinking back to the free skier Eileen Gu, the 18-year-old from San Francisco who has decided to represent China. She is brilliant, polished, and seems ready to take on the world. At her athletic coronation, under those same cooling towers, she delivered under pressure to win gold.

In the audience was Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai. Peng had been disappeared by the government after a tortured social media post detailing her sexual relationship with a senior and married former government official and Olympic executive. She recently announced she retired.

Peng met with IOC president Thomas Bach here and had toured several venues, smiling, not speaking to media. After Gu’s brilliant feat Bach spoke to reporters and said Peng had told him she would be leaving the bubble for a three-week quarantine before returning to China proper.

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Beyond the sports, in context, that was the moment of these Olympics. The Russians can dope a 15-year-old with banned heart medication, and while awful, it’s not a surprise. A pandemic can try to suffocate the Games, but wearing a mask 16 hours a day is just part of the world now.

But China didn’t have to send Peng to that event before vanishing again, in which her glorious young replacement as the face of Chinese sport was showcased to the world. It felt cruel; it felt almost like a sort of human sacrifice. You wonder if Gu realizes what she might be getting herself into.

The magic of the athletes won’t stop. Everyone will carry on. The Games will grind to an end and everyone will escape this Olympics of concrete and fences and humans at both their best and their near-worst, all trapped inside this radioactive madhouse together.

But it will be a journey, and a hard one. One week to go.

Bruce Arthur is a Toronto-based columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @bruce_arthur