Stanley Chao

Opinion | Trumpian treatment of China’s athletes hardly in keeping with Olympic spirit

The vilification of Chinese athletes at this year’s Olympics is a reflection of how their country has been treated by the West

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Stanley Chao

Published: 9:30am, 8 Aug 2024Updated: 10:59am, 8 Aug 2024

If the Olympics are a proxy for geopolitics, they also typically are replete with paeans to the global spirit of sportsmanship and mutual respect. They are supposed to bring out the best in everyone – except, apparently, when the athletes in question are Chinese.

In some Western circles at least, the 2024 Paris Olympics have been open season for the vilification and disrespect of Chinese athletes. Athletes, coaches and fans seem to be taking cues from political leaders intent on bashing China. Through it all, China simply keeps on winning medals.

What stands out in Paris is the blatant anti-China discrimination within the athletic community itself. After Chinese swimmer Pan Zhanle won gold in the 100-metre freestyle final and clipped his world record by a seemingly impossible 0.4 seconds, Brett Hawke, a former Australian Olympic swimmer who is now a coach based in the US, questioned the result. “Listen,” Hawke said in an Instagram video. “I’m just going to be honest. I am angry at that swim, I’m angry for a number of reasons.” The strong implication was that Pan’s feat couldn’t have occurred without doping.

The aspersions stemmed from a report that 23 Chinese swimmers had tested positive for a banned substance just before the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Notably, Pan was not among those swimmers. Moreover, Pan has said he was tested for performance-enhancing drugs before and after his record swim.

China’s Pan Zhanle celebrates after winning the final of the men’s 100m freestyle swimming event during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games on July 31. Photo: AFP

Nevertheless, after Pan swam an extremely fast final leg in the men’s 4x100-metre medley relay to take China to gold, a commentator for a US broadcaster saw fit to mention that two of the swimmers on the team had tested positive for a banned substance three years earlier, although he also clarified that Pan had not tested positive.