The Olympic motto may be “faster, higher, stronger — together,” but athletes stuck in quarantine at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games say it’s more like freezing, hungry and stressed — in isolation.
The Finland men’s ice hockey team coach said that Beijing was not respecting player Marko Anttila’s human rights on Sunday, for example, complaining that he was “not getting food” and was under immense stress, Reuters reported. And the head of Germany’s Olympic team said the hotel conditions for German skier Eric Frenzel were “unacceptable,” describing a lack of hygiene, insufficient Wi-Fi and irregular food deliveries.
iframe.twitter-tweet { width: 100% !important; } “My stomach hurts, I’m very pale and I have huge black circles around my eyes. I want all this to end. I cry every day. I’m very tired,” Vasnetsova wrote in her post. “I’ve lost a lot of weight and my bones are sticking out. I can’t eat anything else, I don’t know anything about my corona tests.”
To be fair, putting on an international event of this magnitude is a logistical challenge in the best of times — and the COVID-19 pandemic, which is approaching its two-year anniversary, is certainly not the most ideal situation to host an Olympic Games. Indeed, Olympic athletes put under quarantine in Tokyo for the postponed 2020 Summer Olympics last year also complained about their living conditions.