China's Games stray off course

By Scott Pitoniak | Rochester Democrat and Chronicle
April 13, 2008

I couldn't help but feel a tinge of sadness recently as I watched London police wrestle with a man trying to put out the Olympic torch with a fire extinguisher.

I remembered the exhilaration I experienced when I carried the torch during the 2002 relay. I recalled how, during my fling with flame, spectators became excited, animated, transfixed the instant they saw the torch; how they snapped pictures, waved miniature flags, applauded, shouted encouragement and shed tears of joy.

Olympic torch relays, like the Olympics themselves, are supposed to be about uniting people and celebrating the world's similarities and differences.

But this so-called "Journey of Harmony" has been anything but. And while it hurts to watch, I understand completely the protesters' perspective.

China was hoping to use the torch relay and the Olympics as a showcase for its "arrival."

But Beijing had to be naïve to think the world would look away from the crackdowns in Tibet, the subsidizing of the Darfur genocide in the Sudan, and the imprisoning of journalists who had the courage to report the truth about the oppression of a Communist regime.

And one can't help but wonder what the International Olympic Committee was thinking when it awarded the games to China in the first place in 2001. Did IOC officials truly believe that Beijing was sincere in its assurances that China would suddenly change its long-time repressive ways and live up to the standard for human rights spelled out in the Olympic charter?

As we watch torchbearers surrounded by members of China's tracksuit-clad Sacred Torch Guard Team, we are reminded that little has changed. The team is supposed to protect the torch, but its members have gone out of their way to attack protesters and even bully the torchbearers themselves.

Sebastian Coe, a two-time medalist and chairman of the 2012 London Games, described them as "thugs" after they tried to push him. Another torchbearer had a Tibetan flag headband snatched from his head.

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