The health crisis, a village under a bell, human rights, artificial snow and environmental violations, data protection, controversial subjects are not lacking, on the sidelines of these Winter Olympics in Beijing.
If we talked a lot about it upstream, once the opening ceremony is over, the news only retains the sporting events. Xavier Monferrand, journalist for the sports department, covers these Games for Radio France with Guillaume Battin and Jérôme Val.
Between non-respect of human rights, climate emergency, health crisis and data protection, the question of participation arises. This is not the first time that the Games have been preceded and accompanied by controversies, incidents or dramas.
The attacks in Munich in 1972, and in Atlanta in 1996. The demonstrations against the Games in Berlin in 1936, repressed in blood, the demonstrations against the Games in Mexico, in 1968, also repressed.
And the calls for a boycott which also hit the football worlds, Argentina in 1978, Moscow more recently. Nothing stopped the athletes from starting. In Pierre de Coubertin’s mind, sport is situated elsewhere, in another hemisphere, and must be unrelated to the horrors of the world.
And it is a fact, once the opening ceremony is over, the subjects around human rights, the violence perpetrated by the authorities of the People’s Republic of China, against the Uyghurs – constituting crimes against humanity and genocide – the health crisis, a bubble that gives images of another world, individuals in white coveralls whose faces cannot be seen, who test everyone they meet for saliva, artificial snow, since winter is snowless, a strain on the climate; all these subjects, however serious and grave they may be, cannot hold sport hostage.
At the risk of shocking – and this was the case in 1972 in Munich – nothing can stop the Olympics.
It is all the more striking that there is no popular fervor around these Winter Games. Admittedly, the epidemic has complicated the conditions of public access, but as Xavier Monferrand points out, many events are traditionally – Covid or not – private to the public.
Which means that the strength of the Olympic Games rests essentially on the performance of the athlete, the surpassing, the elegance of the gesture, the man who tames the myth, by dint of training and renunciation, for four years.
And then what strikes Xavier Monferrand is the beauty of the sites, and particularly the Zhangjiakou Olympic ski jump. The Games are a question of image and aesthetics too. “Big Air” on a former industrial site. Sites where joys and sorrows merge, emotion on edge, sweat and tears, and affected journalists, who transcribe what they see, what they feel, what they experience.