Should there be road racing at the Beijing Olympics?

ricadus

No, it's not a doping thread! :roll:

Olympic chief Jacques Rogge says air pollution could lead to some events at the 2008 Beijing Games being postponed.

Speaking a year to the day before the start of the 2008 Games, the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said: "Sports with short durations would not be a problem, but endurance sports like cycling are examples of competitions that might be postponed or delayed."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/front_page/6934955.stm

Look at the smog in the background of the top photo!

LangerDan

I don't see why it's a problem. Most of the endurance athletes have inhalers.

ricadus

:twisted:

iainf72

I read an article by a marathon runner who said the air in Beijing is absolutely foul.

So who knows - The Chinese will throw some labour at it and sort it out. They should just tax the living heck out of cars (call it the "Peoples Olympic Tax") and that should help.

timoid.

Shouldn't be any Olympics in Bejing. With their human rights record, you might as well hold it in Darfur.

iainf72

Timoid. wrote:

Shouldn't be any Olympics in Bejing. With their human rights record, you might as well hold it in Darfur.

I read in The Sun that human rights are evil, we don't need them.

I'm looking forward to seeing the genetically modified Chinese super athletes. Imagine some little guy on a bike beaten Cancellera by 20 seconds in the pursuit :shock:

Mr Bumble

I think like Athens 2004 we will see alot of erm enthusiastic athletes from the home side having sudden mishaps....

I wonder how many foriegn athletes will be pulled up for doping when the home side has a record of dubious national sporting program....

...last night on the bbc news at ten they interviewed a former chinese weight lifter who had been "awarded" a new laundrette business so she would stop moaning about compensation for supplements that led to her growing a beard!!!! :? :evil:

skavanagh.bikeradar

For the first time in my life I'm actually not looking forward to an Olympics. If they stop the cycling they'll have to stop the marathon, the Triathlon, the 10,000 metres the cross country MTB to name but a few. Still, good news the BMX will go ahead as will urban free-flow running, walking down the street listening to an iPod looking cool and the facebook friends count.

ddraver

I love/hate the way the IOC went, we ll let you have the olympics if you clean up your human rights record, clean up the polloutiuon etc etc...and they went oh yes fine no problem at all, were going to do it anyway..yada yada

surprise surprise they ve done sweet naff all and they re still gonna get to hold them for the glory of peoples china etc....

and people are acting all surprised that they ve doine nothing about any of the things they promised

I appreciate smog is hard to sort out, but the others...grrrrr

ricadus

I think like Athens 2004 we will see alot of erm enthusiastic athletes from the home side having sudden mishaps....

I can imagine IOC testers catching some Chinese medalist dope cheats, then the Chinese authorities accusing the testers of being biased foreign devils and arresting them for attempting to interfere with the 'fair' result of the race.

DavidBelcher

Seem to recall similar concerns re. a Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur a few years ago as it coincided with a series of nearby forest fires plus high humidity - apparently it made the air extremely unpleasant (I think GB time-triallist Stuart Dangerfield was quoted at the time as saying that it was like breathing in pins or needles, or something also those lines), but don't remember any events - cycling or otherwise - being ditched as a result.

David

andyp

Is this all a bit alarmist anyway given that the road race circuit isn't actually in Beijing? From what I've read it starts in Beijing but then travels 80kms out to the Great Wall where there is a circuit that has a rather large hill in it.

There's a test event next week which Cadel Evans, amongst others, will be riding.

skavanagh.bikeradar

Precisely. As I tried hinting at earlier you'd have to cancel a lot of other stuff too, not just the cycling. Perhaps this is a case of the meja getting hold of a non-story and running with it. Or Rogge is doing a Verbruggen and making a bodge of it.

Moose11

An outstanding article all about the Olympics and what it means to real China:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/ ... d=tab7pos1