Event organisers of the Winter Olympics in China are facing a litany of complaints from athletes and countries on multiple fronts, especially over the COVID-19 isolation arrangements. The Guardian has more.
The Polish speed skater Natalia Maliszewska, who was forced to miss the 500m short track event on Saturday, revealed that she had faced fear and uncertainty in a Beijing isolation ward after testing positive for Covid.
“Since a week I have been living in fear and these changes in mood,” she said. “I cry until I have no more tears and make not only the people around me worry but myself too,” she said.
Those in an isolation ward are allowed out if they are free of symptoms and have two negative Covid tests 24 hours apart and Maliszewska was eventually released back to the Olympic village – before being told there had been a mistake.
“People got me out of my room at 3am,” she said. “This night was a horror, I slept in my clothes in my bed because I was afraid that at any moment someone would take me back to isolation. Then a message that unfortunately they were mistaken, that I am a threat, and should not have been released from isolation.
“I have to get back to the Olympic Village as soon as possible,” she added. “I can’t understand this anymore. I no longer believe in any tests, any Olympics. To me this is a big joke, I hope whoever is managing this has a lot of fun. My heart and my mind can’t take this anymore.”
More than 350 Games participants, including dozens of athletes, have tested positive upon arrival in the Chinese capital since January 23rd. Many are still in isolation, fearing their Games are over.
One of those is the Finnish ice hockey player Marko Anttila, whose team believes he is being kept in COVID-19 isolation for no reason. “From a medical perspective we know that a person like this is no longer infectious, no danger to the other team,” Finnish doctor Maarit Valtonen said. “These isolation decisions are not based on medicine or science, it’s more cultural and political decisions.”
The Finland head coach Jukka Jalonen said that the situation was affecting Anttila’s mental health. “We know that he’s fully healthy and that’s why we think that China, for some reason, won’t respect his human rights and that’s not a great situation,” he added.
The Russian biathlon competitor Valeria Vasnetsova also recently expressed her experiences of being in a quarantine hotel, posting on Instagram: “My stomach hurts, I’m very pale and I have huge black circles around my eyes. I want all this to end. I cry every day. I’m very tired.”
Vasnetsova posted a picture of what she said was “breakfast, lunch and dinner for five days already” – a tray with food including plain pasta, an orange sauce, a piece of meat on a bone, a few potatoes and no greens.
There are also general complaint about the food, with Germany’s coach Christian Schwaiger lamenting there was no hot food available for athletes: “The catering is extremely questionable, because really it’s not catering at all. I would have expected that the Olympic Committee is capable of providing hot meals. There are crisps, some nuts and chocolate and nothing else.”
The IOC said it was working with Beijing 2022 to address the issues, adding about the situation in the Covid hotels: “We feel for every athlete who cannot compete because of a COVID-19 infection. The protocols have been put in place to ensure safe Olympic Games for everyone.”
It’s for your safety so suck it up and stop complaining. Will it ever end?
Worth reading in full.
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I guess illegal imprisonment means nothing to the Olympics organisers, who are likely ‘just following orders’ anyway. These games should never have taken place in such a repressive country. Sweden would have been the obvious choice, as they handled the pandemic far far better than any other.
I have no sympathy. They should not have gone. Firstly because China should be boycotted as it is an evil regime. Secondly they should not be bowing to the Covid tyranny, we will never get ‘normal’ back while influencers like this put up with it.
The new Nuremburg Olympics?
I must be hard of heart, but I find it difficult to sympathise with these athletes who turned up at a Games that was built on the backs of 6500 dead construction workers (and who knows how many injured).
That their obsession with their own athletic prowess blinded them to anything else suggests that they’re happy to chase glory (and money) whatever the human cost.
And then they bleat about being ‘inconvenienced’.
Well isn’t that interesting. Anyone else read about this in msm. No, I did not think so.
Why did they go. I think it is shameful that these athletes didn’t boycott the games on human rights grounds. There was enough advertising and discussion about China’s disgusting treatment of its own people let aline the Uygurs
World sports leages like NFL secretly recommeding Ivermectin to their players. Who knows what is out there that recommeds this wonder drug while appearing as provax pro vaxxine cult. It is the trick of Satan. Do your own research and you will see the truth. Trust God and let Him direct you to truth. It is not easy to get this medicine because they are trying everything to block people accessing it. If you want you can get it from https://ivmpharmacy.com
Well they held them in a totalitarian dictatorship in return for money you can’t expect it to be fair or fun. I’m sure the Olympic committee would refute any nefarious financial leverage and I doubt there is any visible but I’d bet there are some businesses that were very keen on advertising to China who have non-exec positions coming available soon. And frankly I bet there are some Swiss accounts doing well too.
Sorry but covid has made me ultimately cynical.
So it falls to the original creators of this bullshit pandemic narrative to keep it alive even though it has been on life support for over a year now.
How could they possibly test positive or be a threat to anyone when they have had gallons of the magic vaccine sauce pumped into them?
Shock. China violating human rights. Who’d have thought?! I suppose all those indefinitely detained are likely gold medal athletes as well… almost like China is orchestrating who wins and who loses. This is what you get for not boycotting these games.
Strangely, Chinese media isn’t reporting this!
Beijing olympics: delivering Covid21 to a waiting world…
Probability of Nasty Gamesmanship by the Chinese?
Want to bet their own competitors are not subject to restricted inadequate poor quality food, disturbed sleep, etc etc.?
Sort of like being in a mild version of a Uigher reeducation camp.
The Finland head coach Jukka Jalonen said that the situation was affecting Anttila’s mental health. “We know that he’s fully healthy and that’s why we think that China, for some reason, won’t respect his human rights and that’s not a great situation,” he added.
Chy-na not respecting human rights?? Well I never…..
Aargh! It’s the olympicron variant!!
They’ve stepped into the epicentre of communist convid madness. Hopefully they’ll leave with an understanding of how precious our freedom is and how perilously close we are to losing it.
If they’ve tested ‘positive’ we don’t want them back here spreading Covid!!
I have absolutely no sympathy for Sports Billies who have chosen to support and flatter an actively and unapologetically genocidal regime just in order be recognised as being the best at push-ups or juggling.
Zero. None. Not the tiniest sliver.
Make better choices.
Meanwhile the BBC covers Peng Shuai situation being (probably rightly) highly critical of China
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-60284261
But still pushes the CCP lies about covid
Could we send the GMB presenters to experience a few weeks of this treatment and then perhaps they would be a bit less keen when calling for the same treatment over here?
Don’t complain. It takes ages to accrue crisps and chocolate on the social credit score!
Nonsense, the weekly chocolate ration has just been increased from 30g to 20g.
But once you reach your meat rations you will be required to eat grasshoppers to reach your weekly protein intake.
maybe they taste a bit like prawns?….then it might not be too bad…
I wonder what the viewing numbers are for the Winter Olympics this time round. That it is in China with all of its human rights violations, that its held in a city that knows no snow and has no winter sports culture and whose governments actions caused this 3 year global covid / democratic meltdown should be sufficient for people to turn off in their millions. I won’t watch it and I’m sure I’m not alone…
I’s not about sport, it’s about World Dominion.
All very true, although if we’re going to boycott the viewing of sport in places that have had a democratic meltdown, then no more Premiership football for me…
For now, I’m drawing the line at empty stadiums and outdoor audiences with masks. That’s all I’m boycotting for now.
Obviously all designed to ensure the Chinese win all the medals as ‘Foreign’ athletes will be too traumatised to train and compete successfully .
And definitely undernourished, – to look at the meal menu.
I cannot believe that anyone would willingly enter China, let alone participate in an event which surely brings so much money to the host city and country. Not only their crazy covid policies but their rampant human rights abuses of minority groups would keep me out if I were an Olympic athlete.
Well, time for the corrupt and insanely wasteful Olympics to be scrapped. I hope this will accelerate such a change!
Until China tops the medals table, every other country’s athletes are going to suffer …
Killing intenational sport must be part of the advancing programme of Global Enslavement.
They’ll plan the marathon’s route alongside a wet market to rub it in. This may provide the machined news cycle to deflect from the heart attacks happening in football stadiums closer to home, Ottawa Freedom Truckers and the impending financial collapse.
The PTB are up in arms everywhere with threats against those spreading Covid-19 misinformation.
When can we expect the arrest (and ideally ritual disembowelment) of the main culprits – Neil Ferguson et al?
The implication being that if your are “fully healthy” and only then one’s human rights must be respected? But if you are unhealthy, i.e. have a cold, your human rights get suspended?
I really have very very little sympathy for people who think they can comply their way out this insane crisis.
When will they learn. How many hoops before they start questioning things?
Jesus.
Jabbed full of gunk.
Muzzled to the eyeballs. Tested to insanity.
Still get coviddy.
Go figure.
Chinese win all the medals and prove their innate ‘superiority’