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About those U.S. cyclists with gas masks
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I don't mean to judge them as people. They did the right thing in apologizing. But in wearing protective masks inside the Beijing airport they were acting like jerks.
Photo by AFP
I grant: these are athletes at the peak of their conditioning. But they can't endure the air inside a building? While they're walking, rather than running or breathing hard? And for the few minutes it would take to get past all the photographers and into the privacy of their buses or cars?
Yeah, no kidding, the air in Beijing is worth complaining about. I've done so plenty, starting with an article I wrote more than two years ago, shortly after I arrived:
It's embarrassing enough for the Chinese hosts that the air looks so bad. It's tasteless, prissy, and showboating for visitors to rub it in this way. (Again, I'm talking about wearing the masks inside, in front of cameras, while standing around -- not sensible precautions for training.)
Why should I rub it in, now that the cyclists have done themselves and their country credit by apologizing? Just to set down an early marker that there is such a thing as dignified and considerate behavior -- even for athletes on the cusp of the competition of their lives, and even when coming to a country where there are ample legitimate grounds for complaint.
Photo by AFP
I grant: these are athletes at the peak of their conditioning. But they can't endure the air inside a building? While they're walking, rather than running or breathing hard? And for the few minutes it would take to get past all the photographers and into the privacy of their buses or cars?
Yeah, no kidding, the air in Beijing is worth complaining about. I've done so plenty, starting with an article I wrote more than two years ago, shortly after I arrived:
Many aspects of the new, improved China will be up for the world's inspection during the Olympic Games. But there is one little catch: the air. Unless something radical changes, I do not understand how athletic events can take place in air as dirty as Beijing's....But complaints should come in the context of realizing that Chinese officials, companies, and citizens actually have done quite a lot to try to cope with the problem (details here) -- and that it's sad in many ways, rather than contemptible, that the first view the world's TV audience will have of spiffed-up Beijing will be of the opaque gray-brown skies. Unless, of course, there's a big cleansing wind out of Mongolia right now.
Everyone assumes that when the time comes for the Games, the authorities will do whatever they have to--closing factories, banning private traffic--to bring pollution down to an endurable level.... Still. If the marathon runners, or even the archers, can finish their events without clutching their chests and keeling over, the Chinese authorities will have accomplished something special.
It's embarrassing enough for the Chinese hosts that the air looks so bad. It's tasteless, prissy, and showboating for visitors to rub it in this way. (Again, I'm talking about wearing the masks inside, in front of cameras, while standing around -- not sensible precautions for training.)
Why should I rub it in, now that the cyclists have done themselves and their country credit by apologizing? Just to set down an early marker that there is such a thing as dignified and considerate behavior -- even for athletes on the cusp of the competition of their lives, and even when coming to a country where there are ample legitimate grounds for complaint.
