Champions of absurdity

Jumping the shark isn’t yet an Olympic sport, but if it were the International Olympic Committee would be a shoo-in for gold. And silver and bronze too. Amid some low-key hoopla last week, the IOC awarded the 2022 Winter Games to Beijing. Yes, that’s the same Beijing that staged the 2008 Olympics and in a couple of weeks will put on the World Athletics Championships.

The 2022 bidding boiled down to a two-horse race between Almaty, Kazakhstan, which at least has some snow; and Beijing, which doesn’t. The previous front-runner, Oslo, withdrew its bid last autumn after all the main political parties rejected the funding plans for the Games. It also later transpired that the IOC had demanded ludicrous privileges, including cocktail parties with the king and tax exemptions for its people. Earlier in the race, Stockholm and Krakow dropped their bids for financial or political reasons. It’s a sorry state of affairs: the Games are supposed to be the ‘greatest sporting event on the planet’, but are fast becoming a shindig for countries with a political point to prove and for whom money is no object.