FEBRUARY 2022 15is just to ski well and ski fast. And
hopefully bring a good result for
Hong Kong and make them proud.”
Whether any demonstrations
will be staged inside the Beijing
bubble remains to be seen. But,
given the dangers posed by the host,
academics and activists alike agree
that no athlete representing an area
under China’s control should bear
responsibility for speaking out. “If
it’s an athlete with some ethnic ties
to China, then it could lead to some
kind of legal charges that could
detain the person in China for a long
period of time,” Gallagher says.
Experts also wonder how much
of the onus even Olympians from
democratic societies should carry.
Rule 50.2 of the Olympic charter
was relaxed last summer to allow
political protests in certain areas,
like mixed-zone interviews, but
still bars them atop the podium.
“The penalties are so draconian,”
says Nikki Dryden, a human rights
lawyer who swam for Canada at
the 1992 and ’96 Games. “Losing
medals, erasure from the record
book, removal of credentials.”
An athlete would have to be well
informed and willing to take a
significant risk, she says. “And
that’s not a position we should be
putting them in.”
So far, a handful of U.S.
Olympians have spoken out against
China. But, as Gallagher notes,
citing the backlash endured by
the NBA after then Rockets GM
Daryl Morey’s “Free Hong Kong”tweet in 2019, China’s silencing
efforts have a “very ambitious
reach.” The goal is self-censorship,
and it seems to be working: One
U.S. athlete headed to Beijing says
they received a mass email from
a USOPC-contracted PR official
strongly recommending that they
and their teammates avoid making
political statements “directed toward
China” until they had safely returned
to U.S. soil. The USOPC did not
reply to requests for comment.
“The IOC has failed to create the
protections for athletes to participate
safely,” says Minky Worden, director
of global initiatives for the nonprofit
Human Rights Watch. “It’s the one
job the IOC has.”
Brian Leung, the executive
director of the D.C.-based
Hong Kong Democracy Council,
points the finger at the billion-dollar
corporations that financially benefitfrom the Olympics. “We’re looking
at those collective organizations to
voice out so the individual athlete
can be protected,” Leung says.
Athletes such as Chu, Yung and
King. “They are heroes to us, right?”
Leung says. “For them to continue
to raise the profile for Hong Kong
people, for them to have major
achievement internationally, it’s
something we take pride in.”
Having lived in the U.S.,
Hong Kong and mainland China,
Chu is well aware of the political
third rails that connect these places.
“I remember my mom [Wendy]
telling me, ‘When you go to China,
don’t talk too
much about
living in the
U.S., and on the
western side, you
don’t want to be
too praising of
China in any sort
of way,’ ” he says.
Speaking over the phone from
Hong Kong, Chu invokes this
advice to explain the tightrope
walk that he now must take with
every media request (of which he
reports receiving more than ever).
“Being part of this delegation in
such a precarious situation, we
really have to watch what we say
because it’ll go viral,” he says. “In
these situations, where athletes pour
their entire lives into sport, into
developing their own skills—just
because of where they were born
and where these Olympics are, they
should not be pulled into someone
else’s political game.”
Instead, when he laces up his
skates in Beijing, he wants to do
what he has done since he was
a boy waiting for water to freeze
inside a cold-storage facility: take
off down the track, like in a race car
but on his own two feet.“It’s a good thing for Hong Kong to be able to
preserve this separate identity with the flag,
with a separate team,” Gallagher says.