Chris Selley: How we can avoid China’s unacceptable Olympics and still keep the games – By Chris Selley (National Post) / Nov 25 2021
Surely it’s not beyond human ingenuity to hold all the competitions scheduled for Beijing elsewhere, just under some banner other than the four rings
Whatever has happened to Peng Shuai, the 35-year-old Chinese tennis pro who accused former vice-premier Zhang Gaoli of sexual assault — and has since provided no halfway-convincing proof of life — it’s lucky for China that it happened a few weeks before it hosts the Winter Olympics and not the Summer Games. It is difficult to imagine that Peng’s colleagues on the women’s and men’s pro tennis tours, at the very least, wouldn’t already be vowing to stay away from Beijing in protest.
It’s also difficult to imagine gymnastics taking time out from its long-overdue sexual-abuse reckoning to reflect glory on a regime that very well may have disappeared an elite athlete for blowing the whistle on a powerful abuser. (If Peng is alive and well, how can it possibly be taking this long to demonstrate it conclusively?)
The pressure would then be on other athletes and nations to follow suit. And for some of them, it would be a relatively easy decision: An Olympic medal isn’t the ne plus ultra victory in tennis, or golf, or soccer. But those are marquee Olympic events nevertheless. By pulling out, they would land a significant blow.
