Winter comes early
PLUS: Some long-weekend leftovers, including a horrible, horrible Manchester story, a hole-in-one, NZers running really fast, and a reader writes in support of Bonds.
The Winter Olympics start this week. There’s an old rule of thumb I break far too often, which simply states: “Don’t write about stuff you know bugger-all about.”
My knowledge of the winter games extends only a little further than the following: In most alpine events, it’s fastest to the bottom; in freestyle events, the aim is to go higher and trickier; on flat ice you either go faster (speed skating), more lovelier (figure skating) or score more (curling and hockey).
I take neither pride nor embarrassment in my lack of cold-sport acumen. While I enjoy slowly and awkwardly sliding down mountains (and once got to do it with bona fide Olympic legend Nancy Greene), I’ve only ever found watching it mildly interesting1.
What I will do is point you in the direction of the best Winter Olympic reporting and writing.
The most obvious place to start concerns the venue.
Beijing is a popular choice for the International Olympic Committee - who have never been particularly bothered where their money comes from as long as it comes - as it is just 14 years since the summer Games were held there. In contrast, it is an unpopular choice for human-rights activists.
This report from the Daily Mail, which is IMHO let down by an over-the-top lede and an over-reliance on one source, highlights why many feel China should never be in the running to host big international sports jamborees.
Human Rights Watch say that by the end of 2017, arrests in Xinjiang [home to the China’s Uyghur Muslim communities] were accounting for nearly 21 percent of all arrests in China, despite the region holding only 1.5 percent of the national population.
Amnesty International published a 160-page report last year, honing in on “extreme measures taken by Chinese authorities since 2017 to essentially root out the religious tradition under the guise of fighting ‘terrorism’.”
Satellite imagery has shown the rapid emergence of hundreds of camps that are officially described as re-education facilities. Human Rights Watch estimate as many as a million are interred there, others suggest substantially more.
On the ground, the limited testimonies of survivors paint a picture of appalling terror, of being detained arbitrarily for months or years amid 'indoctrination' and atrocious abuses that contravene international law.
Even better is this column by veteran Associated Press columnist Jim Litke, which starts with the classic line: “The Olympic Charter runs 112 pages and reads like something Gwyneth Paltrow would have written if she were in charge of the Games instead of Goop.”
It is also nice to read a writer whose cynicism about the morals and ethics of the IOC and its satellite organisations match mine.
“The IOC's involvement has resembled nothing more than the lookout on the crimes-in-progress. They don't see any abuse and sure won't talk about it. If anything, the swells in charge and the corporate sponsors who line their pockets have stayed silent and even gone out of their way to help paper over those transgressions – with predictable results.”
That column was available through the Stuff website. They have a very handy dedicated Olympic drop-down menu that includes some nice and fluffy athlete-driven pieces if you want to bone up on your NZ team knowledge before the Games begin.