Depending on whether or not they get lucky with the weather, the Beijing Olympics might not, or might, turn into a PR disaster both for the International Olympic Committee, who chose Beijing, and for the Chinese Government, who assured the IOC that pollution in Beijing would not be a problem. But, pollution in Beijing is already a problem:
Thomas Rohregger’s first breath of Olympic air was not what he expected. “I hadn’t thought that it would be so bad,” the Austrian said after his first training ride. “Really awful, my lungs and even my eyes are burning.”
Rohregger rode only the flat stretch of the road race course and didn’t get into the climbs. “That’s why I tried to ride a bit faster. But the pressure on my lungs was nearly unbearable. Three hours of training felt like six hours,” said Rohregger to Austrian television sender ORF.
I’ve been linking to news about Beijing pollution for a while now from my personal blog, and the man from Blognor Regis, to whom thanks, added that quote-and-link to my latest posting on the subject.
I also added a bit at the end of that same posting about how the architectural planning of the Beijing Olympics has been done by the son of Albert Speer, who is called Albert Speer. Albert Speer senior being the man who did a similar job for Hitler’s Olympics in 1936. My thanks to Mick Hartley for blogging recently about that. As another of my esteemed commenters said, you could not make it up. But as soon as I had stuck up that bit about Albert Speer Jnr., I worried that maybe someone had made it up, and that I had fallen for one of those internet hoaxes. I checked every date involved to see that it wasn’t April 1st. It seems, amazingly, to be true. Apparently Michael Jennings of this blog emailed me in April about this Speer connection, but I paid no attention then and can find no trace of this email now. My computer must have swallowed it. Or maybe I thought he’d made it up and deleted the email on purpose.
Undeterred, Michael J today emailed me another Olympic link worth following, to a Slate piece which asks of the Beijing Olympics: What could possibly go wrong? Pollution is number two on the list. Four is that the TV coverage might get screwed up, and five is that these Olympics may inflict food poisoning on lots of the athletes.
Blogging personally, and in my capacity as a London council tax payer, my biggest worry is that it will all go very smoothly, that many British people in particular will be very impressed and excited, and that Britain’s politicians will then be encouraged to spend even more billions in tax money on the London version of this idiocy in four years time than is set to be spent anyway.
I think that a good message for a T-Shirt would be ‘FREE CHINA FROM TIBET!’
Tibet is dragging China down! The place is a money-pit, the tibetans don’t appreciate the easy access to Chinese culture that they now have, and it gives China a bad name!
Can you find a Tibetan restaurant? What would it have other than Yak? Chinese restaurants are so plentiful you almost trip over them!
The Tibetans should stop dragging down China! There should be a peaceful separation, like a divorce, and then China can soar!
From what I can tell, the answer to your question, most obviously, is that several atheletes will fall seriously ill because of the chronic pollution and sue the Olympic folks over this.
Well, to be fair, I hope the Chinese state media devotes 50% of its coverage on the London Olympics to our slide off the world stage, from smoke-belching Empire to indulgence in devolution and green dogma.
What’s that Ethiopean chap called? You know the absolute top-notch distance runner. You know the one who has asthma and bailed on the Beijing marathon because it might kill him or wreck his career. I can say his name. I just can’t spell it.
Beijing is a total cluster-fuck to be followed in four short years by the unmitigated disaster which will be that sports day in Hackney which we will be paying for till the heat death of the Universe.
Brian,
it’s not made up, Speer Jr. is actually doing what the article says:
Olympic hubris
Unlike Ms. Khrushcheva I have no problem with that.
He is also designing whole cities in China.
That also is a good thing. Anything that improves the quality of life and energy efficiency there is a step in the right direction.
…. and so, as dawn breaks here in Beijing,
it is goodbye for now, from me, Huw Edwards, despirately trying to pretend that what looks like the smoke from a forest fire behind me, isn’t smog, but the morning mist burning off in the first rays of the sun…
And about to beat seven shades of crap out of the little Chinese bastard, who has yabbered loudly in Cantonese, throughout my entire loud feed…
It’s back to Fiona in the studio..
Piss! Loud should be live.
RAB “despirately trying to pretend that what looks like the smoke from a forest fire behind me, isn’t smog”.
Huh? The BBC has been going on & on & on…(you get the picture)… about Beijing pollution. It must have been written into the BBC charter that no mention of the Chinese economy or the Olympics can be made without reference to their nasty, evil, polluting ways.
By 2050 the UK will be begging for a bit of wealth-creating smog, once our greenie regulations have left the economy in tatters & the lights have gone out!
Nick g.
Tibetan food is lovely, although usually vegetarian. I’ve only been able to find it in Paris however.
It may be worth steering clear of the rancid yak butter tea though.
I remember reading about the Chinese government’s attempts to fix the pollution. Closing down factories, odd and even number-plate days, that sort of thing. I’m sure the Chinese people trying to get real work done really appreciate their lives being so disrupted for the sake of athletics.
Ray, do try and crack a smile once in a while love 😉
Now the Games are underway,I suspect that the pollution issue will fade into the background until someones lungs explode during the marathon.
Let’s see how many World records are broken this time.
That will flag up the pollution levels.
I was born in the fifties, before the Clean Air Act was passed. I know all about smog. Nasty stuff! It killed thousands in Britain back then.
I’m watching the opening ceremony right now.
Fair enough impressive stuff!
The drummers make the chaps from Burundi look positively feeble.
It is an interesting bit of (I’m not sure if “irony” is the right word, but it will have to do) that the Chinese would hire Albert Speer Jr. to design their Games. Still, if he truly is “an acclaimed architect and town planner” as the article states, it doesn’t bother me. The man has to make a living somehow, after all, and the last time I look we had abolished corruption of the blood.
I am, presently sitting here in an internet cafe in Beijing. Having been in China for some time, it is fascinating to see how much they’ve changed the capital. The air, though horendous by western standards, is an improvement over the usual. Traffic really has been reduced and the halting of all constructions has made the city strangely quiet.
Also contributing to the quiet is the relative lack of people. Hoards of Beijingers have fled the city (and many of the westerners I know who live in China have opted not to go), and the authorities have temporarily imprisoned all the beggars and other “embarrassments”. The huge squads of volunteer info and assistence people seem to have a genuine desire to help, yet only a few of them speak english and most of those speak it badly. Still, when consulted in Mandarin, they have been useful.
Today I was in the nighborhood of the Lamaistic Buddhist Temple which the government closed, although they tell me it will reopen tomorrow…we shall see. Most of the shops (which virtually all sell Tibetan paraphernalia) and houses in the neighborhood are empty. I am curious to know whether this is because smart residents left to avaid trouble, or if there are perhaps more sinister reasons and they were rounded up with the beggars.
The many groups of uniformed men patroling they city are also a new change. Sure before one would occasionally encounter such men around key sites, but now they march in countless squads and there is one lone soldier at each bus stop. Stranger still is the homogeneity between squads. The majority of them are fit, well-trained, well-dressed professionals. Yet there are also groups which are apparently from some kind of auxillary corps, and these guys are just laughable. They are all tiny and look very young and weak, and since their strange shabby uniforms are way too big for them, they look like little boys dressed up for Halloween.
They few reporters I have seen doing their bits before cameras have been surrounded by soldiers and police officers, although it was unclear whether this was for protection or monitoring. The funny thing is that despite all this effort to police the populace, I was still witnessed a group of Caribean men who attempted to sell me narcotics and claimed they could get “any type you wanted’ I was rather shocked since they seemed to operate with impunity, despite the police woman stationed at the other side of the crosswalk, who was either clueless or in on the deal.
I hope that gives a clear picture of the state of things here at the moment, we shall see how things develop!
P.S. The internet cafe required that I give them my passport number, which makes me slightly nervous (but since I leave in a few days I won’t worry too much). Still, I would rather not post my real name, in order to prevent being too positively linked to an illegally honest point of view…
I was in Beijing on business last year and, due to one thing and another, I had to walk the 2 miles or so back to my hotel (next to the Birdsnest Stadium).
I was stick for 3 weeks when I got home with a sore throat and chest problems. That was May and it hadn’t started getting really hot and cloudy yet. I suspect this is going to go down as a mistake.
Of course, building on a post-industrial Swamp in East London might not work out either. Just take a look at what’s happened with the canoe centre after the local public health guys had finished explaining what was underground where they _wanted_ to put it.
Thanks for that Z
Drop in and tell us more tales from China, when you get safely back.
This may take a while to get to you though.
You are obviously not in the internet cafe right now.
Will not work
Every time he gets angry enough to yank the cord they will have gone on another vacation.
Please Disregard Previous Comment
My wanky dial up decided to do strange things, and I’ve never been the sharpest knife in the drawer.
“What tools these morals be.”
With apologies to Wm. Shakespeare.
What could go wrong with the Olympics? Any number of things, however the root cause of these will be poor contingency planning – or maybe planning overall. A guy I know is a volunteer and he’s said the management is terrible. He described their “training sessions” as totally rudderless and chaotic.
However, my experience with Chinese officialdom is that it creaks along if everything goes exactly as planned. Any deviations to the plan, though, result in inaction while a huge number of people shrug their shoulders and look to each other with blank expressions. I see no reason why these Games should be any different. And you can guarantee that, with an event of the size and complexity of the Olympic Games, there will be occasions when the unexpected happens. Normally these can be contained by a decisive manager taking quick action. However, the typical (mainland) Chinese reaction to this kind of thing is a combination of buck-passing and standing dumbstruck. Thus, small problems that arise snowball. And big problems…
That’s the biggest threat to the Olympics, in my opinion.
Looking forward to the specia; events,the Cough Step and Jump,the Synchronised Wheezing,high jumpers disappearing into the mists and coming down dead.The only ones who will get a breath of fresh air will be the pole vaulters,even they can’t stay up there forever.
Instead of Heath Ledger, why not nominate the Chinese Communist Party? ‘The Air in Beijing will be Good’, said with such a straight face, must take great acting skills! An Oscar for the Beijing Olympic Committee! Ledger is dead, and so won’t appreciate it (What is worse than post-humous fame?).