Delay the Olympics

Re: “Controversy greets countdown”, (Sports, Jan 4).

The National Hockey League (NHL) announced before recent Christmas that its pulling out all of its players from participating in the upcoming Winter Olympics in Beijing in early February of this year. This is a huge blow, considering that men’s Ice Hockey is the signature event of the Winter Olympics. The Canadian Mixed Curlers soon followed suit, withdrawing from the games also, in what is sure to be the first of many other withdrawals from the Winter Olympics.

Now the CEO of the Canadian Olympic Committee(COC), David Shoemaker, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation(CBC), that he “is worried whether the games can go ahead” as planned. It should be noted that Canada was the first country to withdraw from the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. So one would think that they would not be hesitant to withdraw also from the upcoming games, and that nor would other Western European nations be hesitant.

Being that the Omicron variant of Covid-19 has only recently cropped up onto the scene and seems to be spreading quickly, and that the Chinese government has already locked down entire cities in a bid to control things, I think it is time for the Communist government to seriously considering doing what Tokyo did at the 2020 Summer Olympics, and delay the opening of the Winter games to later in 2022 or at another date. If the Chinese government fails to do this, then there is a good chance that some nations will voluntarily withdraw from the games. PAUL