(Beijing) Above all, it is the image of Gu Ailing that comes to mind, as a symbol of a world whose pole has shifted towards Asia.
Posted at 11:00 a.m.
At 18, she is not only an Olympic champion in one of the new disciplines – freestyle skiing. She is a pianist, first in class, admitted to Stanford University, cover girl in his spare time and speaks with unparalleled poise and eloquence.
She was born in San Francisco to an American father and a Chinese mother. Between her two national allegiances, she chose that of her mother. Of course, he was blamed for it in the United States. The American right says it has been “bought” by the Chinese dictatorship – as if defecting to the United States hadn’t also been a huge financial advantage for athletes around the world.
We can sue her however we want, one fact remains, regardless of her motives: between the two, she chose the Chinese flag. Hard to imagine that only a generation ago.
And since she speaks both Mandarin and English, she didn’t just put on an athletic display. She could carry the official message of the Games (“together for a common future”), while avoiding the political pitfalls of repression by the Chinese regime in Xinjiang or Hong Kong. We couldn’t have asked for a better spokesperson.
She voted with her skis.
The other great Chinese success is controlling the number of cases in the Olympic “bubble”. At last count, 436 positive cases had been recorded, with almost none in the past week. A few athletes and accredited people have been placed in isolation, but of the approximately 2,700 athletes, barely a handful have been affected. When you consider that 63,000 people from all over the world lived in this bubble, it is a success from a health point of view. All that implied a kind of confinement, and millions of tests. But Chinese Public Health does not act differently in the rest of the country: it is the zero COVID-19 policy, and the slightest outbreak leads to the closure of neighborhoods, if not entire cities.
All of this made it possible to hold the Games against all odds. But also, for China, where the virus came from, to tell the rest of the world: we know how to control it.
Call it swab propaganda.
All the Winter Games bring up the existential question: how can a small country like Norway (5.4 million inhabitants) win the Games, both for the number of gold medals (16) and the number of medals short (37)?
Admittedly, the sporting tradition and general level of physical activity are exceptional in this Nordic country. But it is not the count of medals that teaches us. Otherwise, the United States, often champions of the Summer Games, would be the most athletic and fit country on Earth.
Everything is relative, as far as medals are concerned. Of the 35 Norwegian medals, 21 were won in cross-country skiing or biathlon, disciplines which have a total of 23 events, and therefore distribute 69 medals. Of the 17 medals for the Netherlands, 16 are in speed skating (long or short track). If by chance your country excels at hockey, you may have the 25 best athletes in the world, but you can collect two medals at most.
And when, like in Canada, you invest a lot in “new” sports that are relatively unplayed in the world, your final account may be brilliant, without saying anything about the general level of athletic excellence. from the country.
It takes nothing away from the merit of the medalists. You just have to remember that these charts are distorting mirrors, and generally do not mean what they are made to say.