• Injured pair return;Hockey

Olympic Games that we have any leverage at all on human rights. That's part of the reason why Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Human Rights in China have not called for a boycott.
Sports boycotts have a patchy record at best. The sporting boycott of South Africa was a success because it was only one of a wide number of diplomatic pressure points, such as economic sanctions, applied to the South African regime by a united international community. Even so, the dismantling of apartheid took three decades to achieve.
The example of South Africa in no way mirrors the situation in China today. The international community's relationship with China is by and large a warm one; a boycott would be the source of bitter division. There are no economic or political sanctions - a boycott of the Beijing Games is the sporting equivalent of a UN sanction imposed on China; something that no leading Western government has any intention of proposing. Chinese sportsmen and women do not face boycotts in other events; no one, for instance, is calling for a boycott of the Shanghai Grand Prix.
To use the Olympics as a one-off gesture of condemnation serves no useful purpose. Athletes should neither be asked nor expected to solve a problem to which the governments of the world have yet to find an answer.
So my deep-rooted conviction remains that athletes should compete in Beijing and I will fight for that right on their behalf. In sport we can set the example of engaging, not isolating. The athletes should look up at the Olympic flame and be proud that, through its strength, there is a real chance for change in the world's most populous country. That flame is undoubtedly shining into the recesses of China.
Ironically, the greatest challenge may come when the flame is extinguished on August 24. Many human rights campaigners will wish that the Olympic Games were an annual event; and that the permanent site was Beijing.
Lord Moynihan, chairman of the British Olympic Association, won a silver medal in the Moscow Games
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Features

The Tibet solution is under China's nose;Comment;Opinion

Malcolm Rifkind

934 字

2008 年 3 月 21 日

The Times

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21

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(c) 2008 Times Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved
* Hong Kong provides a perfect model
It is easy to get depressed about the trauma of Tibet and the suppression of Tibetan cultural and political aspirations. It is, after all, almost half a century since the Dalai Lama fled his country. He has never been able to return and recent events make it highly unlikely that he will in the foreseeable future.
Over that half century the Soviet Union has collapsed into 15 independent states, apartheid has been defeated in South Africa, colonial empires have disappeared, and the United States could be about to elect its first black president. But Tibet and the Tibetans remain under the iron hand of Beijing, denied not just self-government but also the free expression of their unique cultural and religious identity.
Pessimism about the future may seem inevitable but it need not be. A solution is already available that would not only meet Tibetan aspirations but would do so in a way that should be acceptable to China.
China is the country that invented the concept of two systems in one country. It did so in order to absorb Hong Kong back into the motherland without killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. It was the inspiration of Deng Xiaoping and it has been brilliantly successful.
Instead of insisting that the Hong Kong Chinese had to accept a communist economic system combined with political uniformity, the people of Hong Kong have been able to continue to live as a Western, capitalist enclave within the Chinese body politic.
Although there are clear limits to its freedom and democratic rights, Hong Kong enjoys real autonomy, a functioning rule of law and a liberal press and media that have no equivalent in most of China.
Similar freedoms have been conceded to the former Portuguese colony of Macao. Nor is there any doubt that the Chinese Government would be delighted to conclude a similar arrangement with the Taiwanese if the latter could be persuaded to accept reunification with mainland China in the years to come.
If China is, therefore, able to live with genuine autonomy and cultural freedom in Hong Kong and Macao, and if it would be only too happy to concede it to Taiwan, why can a similar offer not be made to the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan people?
The answer is that, until now, the Chinese have not considered it to be necessary. They have assumed that they could make the Dalai Lama a non-person, gradually forgotten by his fellow Tibetans. They have hoped that a substantial and growing migration of Han Chinese into Tibet would transform the demographic composition of the territory and make the Tibetans an ethnic minority in their own land.
China now has to acknowledge that these objectives have totally failed. Far from marginalising the Dalai Lama, they have seen him transformed into an Asian Nelson Mandela, feted around the world and revered by his people as a symbol as well as a leader.
Young Tibetans have become radicalised as people do in the modern world wherever the denial of freedom is seen as being combined with foreign occupation. Tibet looks likely to become a cause celebre for protest movements around the world and public opinion in the West wants their leaders to do what they can to help the Tibetan cause.
An autonomous, self-governing Tibet within China should not be that difficult for the Chinese to accept. The Dalai Lama has made it clear that he is not seeking independence and, while that will disappoint many of his followers, the vast majority would accept his authority and be delighted and relieved if some genuine self-government was to be introduced.
The Chinese, for their part, would find that their reputation in the world as a whole was transformed. At present they appear, and behave, as if they were the world's last colonial empire. The internet and the mobile phone have made it impossible for them to seal off Tibet from the outside world. Increased repression or political and cultural reform are the only choices left available to them and the price they would pay if they opt for repression will be high and will grow.
We should not be naive. Whatever the price, the Chinese would be willing to pay it if they saw Tibet breaking away from China and becoming a separate state. That will not be even a distant possibility unless and until China itself embraces democratic reform.
But a Tibetan province with cultural freedom and a significant degree of political autonomy would be no more than is already enjoyed by Hong Kong and Macao. It would be a Chinese solution to a Chinese problem and all the better for it.
The Chinese are planning that the Olympic torch should, in the run-up to the Olympic Games, be carried through Tibet on its way to Beijing. In current circumstances that would constitute a shameful betrayal of the Olympic ideal.
But if the Chinese Government means what it says when it offers a dialogue with the Dalai Lama in exchange for a renunciation of independence and violence, there could be a transformation in the current poisonous atmosphere.
A serious offer of political and cultural reform would not only delight the Tibetans and impress the world, it would also make the Beijing Olympics a unique opportunity to welcome the new China to its rightful place in the pantheon of nations.
Sir Malcolm Rifkind, MP, was Foreign Secretary, 1995-97
(c) Times Newspapers Ltd, 2008
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Right now all the torch represents is China - the sport comes later;Olympi cs

Simon Barnes, Chief Sports Writer

761 字

2008 年 3 月 21 日

The Times

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7

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(c) 2008 Times Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved
At the Olympic Games, bullshit and beauty walk hand in hand. The event totters under the weight of portentous symbols; pious talk of world peace and universal love never ceases; politicians and corporations fight and pay for the Olympic zing. But the only Olympic truth is in the action.
When best takes on best, when champion takes on champion, and does so for one of the few prizes in sport that has a scarcity value, we have something that makes profound sense and that possesses a profound beauty.
No matter where you turn in the 16 days of action in an Olympic city, you find yourself watching someone having the most important day of his or her life, the day for which all other days have been preparation, and this is where truth is to be found. It is something I have found utterly compelling in the five Summer Games I have covered for this newspaper.
But the extraneous stuff of torches and flames and vows and dancing children and dreams and doves touches me very little. Opening and closing ceremonies are occasions I try to swerve; seen one vision of world peace, you've seen 'em all. I can get bullshit at home. Give me the action, whether it comes from a Tsukahara from a wisp of gymnast, a clean and jerk from a super-heavyweight weightlifter or the passage and piaffe of a mighty dressage horse.
Organisers love the symbols. But the sacred flame, stolen from the gods by Prometheus, relit on Mount Olympus for every Olympiad by the rays of the Sun with the assistance of 11 priestesses in exiguous garments, is something that leaves me cold.
On, then, to the sacred torch relay. This does not go back to Classical times: it was invented to glorify Hitler. It was first used at the Berlin Games of 1936. It took eight days and involved 3,422 runners. There were 86,000 runners for the torch relay that ended in Athens four years ago; there will be 137,000 for the relay that ends in Beijing this summer. They plan to take the torch up Mount Everest; London, even now, will be wondering how to top that.
There are aspects of this that are mildly amusing. The torch has travelled by canoe, on horseback, by Concorde, and even gone underwater at the Great Barrier Reef. The flame in the stadium went out in Montreal at the Games of 1976; someone relit it with a fag-lighter. Now the torch bearing the flame that will eventually light up the stadium in Beijing will come through London next month. It will ride the Docklands Light Railway, among other excitements. It becomes a sitting duck for protesters, a Beijing duck if you like. That is because China is using the Olympic Games for its own self-aggrandisement.
Hitler wanted the Games for exactly the same reason. Mind you, so did Tony Blair, speaking up for the London Games of 2012. The Olympic Games are always about self-aggrandisement but the host nation perpetually thinks we won't notice, distracted as we are by the eternal flame and the world peace bullshit. In 1980 the Moscow Games were a celebration of the triumph of the Soviet Empire. In 1984 the Los Angeles Games celebrated the triumph of the US based multinationals. That's how the Games work.
Greece had all sorts of political and economic things to tell the world when Athens hosted the Games four years ago, but I can't really remember what they were. Most of us remember the less transient matters: the glory of Kelly Holmes, the impossible victory of Matthew Pinsent, the power of the American swimmer, Michael Phelps, the intensity of the Swedish heptathlete, Carolina Kluft. That's where beauty lies, and with it truth.
The Olympic Games is both the purest event in sport and the one most overladen with baggage. The torch is part of the baggage. It's heavy with the most unsubtle kind of symbolism and as such it is a target, perhaps a legitimate one, for those who wish to express reservations about what it represents.
Right now, the Olympic torch represents not peace, not brotherhood, but China, and the contrast between its self- aggrandising Olympic ambitions and its record on human rights. It certainly doesn't represent sport. But that, at least, will come later.
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Inflamed passions as symbol of peace prepares to travel across troubled globe;Olympics;Factbox

Ashling O'Connor, Olympics Correspondent

1,252 字

2008 年 3 月 21 日

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(c) 2008 Times Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved
* London leg seen as possible flashpoint
* Fury over plan to take torch to top of Everest
For Aaron Howlett, being chosen as one of the 21,880 people to carry the Olympic flame through London ranks as one of the proudest moments of his life.
"To be asked to carry the Olympic torch is the greatest honour. I'd run it in Iraq," said the 32-year-old motivational therapist, who lost 10 stone in 19 weeks to earn the title of the Biggest Loser UK in a weight-loss competition.
Tenzin Dorjee, a Tibetan-American student leader, views the arrival of the flame in London as a different kind of opportunity. He is expecting to be joined by more than 1,000 Tibetans from around Britain and Europe to converge on the capital to protest about China's failure to live up to Olympic ideals and the promises it made when it won the Games in 2000.
"London is one of the cultural and economic capitals of the world, so we need to send a message to the Chinese Government that we will not let them spread their propaganda in the free world," said Mr Dorjee, who was arrested by the Chinese at Everest base camp last year for unfurling a banner in protest at the trial ascent of the torch.
For both, London presents a perfect stage. How the capital responds to the torch's arrival could have profound consequences for four years time when London hosts the 2012 games.
The arrival of the flame in London marks the first big moment on its 85,000 mile journey through 135 cities around the world in the run up to the Beijing games.
The domestic part of its journey takes in the summit of Mount Everest and other parts of Tibet en route to the Olympic stadium for the opening ceremony on August 8.
The relay, the longest in Olympic history, will focus world attention once again on China's human rights record with the London leg a potential flashpoint because of its status as the next host city.
Protesters say the torch, a symbol of peace, justice and brotherhood, should not be allowed to enter Tibet nor reach the top of the world's highest peak because of the message it would send out. They are calling on the International Olympic Committee and Olympic sponsors such as Coca-Cola to prevent the Chinese from running the torch to the 29,035ft summit, which has been closed to climbers in preparation.
"Taking the torch into Tibet would not only be wrong, it would also be dangerous," said Kelsang Gope, spokesman for the Tibet Olympic Committee.
Mr Howlett, who in June will also carry the torch for Samsung, an Olympic sponsor, in Guilin, in the autonomous region of Guangxi Zhuang, said: "People want to make a statement because there is no higher-profile event than the Olympics, but it's not the time or the place. The Olympic Games is about bringing people together."
In London, Mr Dorjee is expecting to be joined by human rights activists protesting about China's role in the Darfur crisis.
When he was arrested at base camp last April, he said he and four friends were interrogated by the Chinese police for two days - the first without food. After their release, they were deported. "Some Tibetan people in China are not so lucky," he said.
Darfur, which prompted the Hollywood director Stephen Spielberg to resign as an artistic adviser to the Games, is still an issue for Beijing in its attempt to present the most spectacular and biggest Olympics ever. Activists, led by the actress Mia Farrow, plan protests in San Francisco and Hong Kong, which will receive the torch on April 9 and May 2 respectively, to ensure that Darfur remains on the political agenda.
Beijing officials have refused to allow their plans to be derailed. Jiang Xiaoyu, executive vice-president of the Beijing Olympic organising committee, said that the Tibet leg of the relay would proceed as planned and be a "great feat of Olympic history".
He added: "We heard recently that some organisations are claiming they will stage protests. Those activities will not win the hearts and minds of people and are doomed to fail."
The route could still be changed if protests turn ugly. Security experts have done a reconnaissance of all the cities hosting the torch and local police forces and governments have to sign a contract promising to ensure the safety of the torch and its bearers. Risks are being constantly assessed.
"It is entirely conceivable that a leg could be cancelled," said Neil Fergus, a security adviser to the Chinese who has experience of three torch relays.
"We did it for the Sydney Games when the torch was due to go to Fiji but there was a coup. We came close with the Solomon Islands when two militia groups wanted to have their photograph taken with it at a road block. But I don't think this relay is going to get out of hand because it has been meticulously planned."
The relay was confined to the host nation until the Sydney Games in 2000 when it toured the Asia-Pacific region, but is becoming increasingly important as the Olympics grow in size and commercial value. The Athens organisers were the first to take it all the way around the globe in 2004.
The logistics of the torch relay are complex. Several "mother flames", which are constantly alight as a representation of the Olympic spirit, are transported in their own specially-designed private jets with a core team of security guards. They are then used to light thousands of replica torches carried by celebrities and ordinary people nominated by the host cities and the three sponsors, Coca Cola, Lenovo and Samsung.
Beijing's event starts officially on Monday when the flame will be lit - using a mirror to reflect the sun's rays - in Olympia, Greece, the home of the ancient Games. The torch will be passed to Chinese officials on March 30 who will fly it to Beijing for the start of its journey across the five continents. Its first international stops before London are Almaty in Kazakhstan, Istanbul in Turkey and St Petersburg in Russia.
The IOC said the route of the torch relay was plotted by Beijing Olympic organisers and could not be dictated by Olympic chiefs in Lausanne. A spokeswoman said: "The IOC shares the world's desire for a peaceful resolution to the tensions of past days in Tibet. We hope that calm can return to the region as quickly as possible."
* HOPE, DREAMS AND TV
* Lighting a flame for the duration of the Games began with the Ancient Greeks. It represents "hope and dreams, sunshine and happiness, friendship, peace and equality"
* It made its first appearance in the modern Olympics at the 1936 Berlin Games overseen by Hitler
* A new model is made for each Games from aluminium. It is fuelled by propane and, when there is no wind, the flame is 25-30cm high and is always bright enough to be seen on TV
* Mother flames, in safety lanterns, are kept alight constantly
* The final torchbearer does a lap of the stadium before lighting the cauldron with the Olympic flame, after which the Games begin officially
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Sport

Hoy's big wheels keep on turning as he sets off in pursuit of another gold;Special report Road to Beijing

Owen Slot Chief Sports Reporter

1,409 字

2008 年 3 月 20 日

The Times

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90

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(c) 2008 Times Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved
The Scot earned the top prize in Athens and aimed for a repeat. They scrapped his event. So he climbed back into a different saddle...
To appreciate fully the astonishing achievements of Chris Hoy and the fact that he is the favourite to win gold in the track cycling World Championships in Manchester next week and then in Beijing in August, it may help to give his predicament some context.
Imagine, for instance, that you were Paula Radcliffe and you were told that there was to be no marathon at the Olympic Games this summer. Or Monty Panesar and you learnt that there was to be no more spin bowling. Or Jonny Wilkinson and that place-kicking was to be phased out. It would screw up your career - to say nothing of your head, your earning ability and the rest.
And so to Hoy, who, amid high drama, won gold in the one-kilometre time trial at the Athens Olympics in 2004. The "kilo" was known as the "race of truth". It was pure, there was no element of luck or judges' subjectivity. It was simply down to who was fastest on the night.
Jason Queally, Hoy's Great Britain team-mate, had won the kilo gold in Sydney four years earlier. After the Athens Games, Hoy intended to defend his title all the way to London 2012. That was until he received a phone call from one of the British Cycling coaches. "I thought it was a wind-up," Hoy said. But it was not. The race of truth had gone. The UCI, the sport's governing body, had removed it from the Olympic programme in order to accommodate the BMX events.
Two and a bit years later, his views on the UCI have hardly mollified. Its decisions, he says, have "no logic", are "undemocratic" and "fail to understand the needs of who they represent". But he also told himself that "dwelling on them wasn't going to do me any good. I had to move on."
Which brought him to the keirin, a bike race with a curious history, particularly in Japan, where its betting market brings in billions and the top riders are Lamborghini-driving superstars.
The keirin, like the kilo, is an endurance sprinter's event, but it is not a solo time-trial. It has up to eight riders on the track - initially paced by a motorbike rider - and is thus about racing and race tactics as opposed to pure, unadulterated speed.
It is no secret that man-against-man racing was not remotely what Hoy was all about. Initially, he said, "I started racing keirin just to gain a bit more speed and give me a bit of racing".
Dave Brailsford, the performance director at British Cycling, said: "I don't think many people would have thought that the ability to switch was possible. His strength was his physical ability, his power, his speed. There were quite a few debates as to whether it was possible as a mature athlete to gain the tactical awareness and feel."
Hoy was turning 30, as his early efforts reflected. "Initially I tended to get into trouble," he said. "I used to wait and then have to react and respond. I was too concerned about what was going on and I'd get caught up in the bunch."
This remained the case until January last year, at the World Cup event in Los Angeles, where he opted for a new game plan. Instead of playing the racing game, he elected to go from the front, to put all the pure power and speed that won him the kilo out front and challenge the field to catch him.
He won the heat in LA and went with the same tactic in the semi-finals - which he won - and again in the final.
"I won it and really surprised myself," Hoy, who will be 32 on Sunday, three days before the World Championships start, said.
"At the Manchester World Cup afterwards I did the same thing and won again and surprised myself again. The more you win and the more it works, the more you think, 'I can do this.'" Thus was Hoy transformed. Slowly the wins started to accumulate until one of the Britain coaches said to him: "That's 13 rides in a row unbeaten." Hoy said: "I hadn't thought about it." Yet soon rivals started to realise that there was a formidable winning streak being built. Keirin is unpredictable and it is unusual for riders to win their heats and semi-finals outright, but Hoy was coming first every time.
Which brings us to the present debate. In Copenhagen last month, Hoy won the World Cup keirin to take his winning streak to 22. But tacked on at the end of the event was an invitation keirin, for the Japanese betting market, and because he was exhausted from 15 races in three days, he lost in his heat. Some say that this does not count, that the streak goes on, but not Hoy. "I got beaten and that's the bottom line," he said. "I'm fairly glad it ended in Copenhagen because it stops people saying, 'Is this going to be the one you're going to lose?'" Either way, he has made his point. There is nothing sophisticated about his approach, but as Brailsford said: "He doesn't show a huge repertoire of tactics. Most other riders know more or less what's coming, but they haven't found a way round it."
What he has begun to do is what Steve Redgrave and Matthew Pinsent were masters of - taking scalps before they got to the start line. "You can demoralise people," Hoy said. "In the heats, if you can ride strongly, a little show of strength now and again just to remind them always helps. So much is in the head. What's important is letting the opposition think you're invincible."
Hoy clearly hopes that this continues all the way through to Beijing. He did, on occasions, come close to wandering from his chosen path. He rowed and played rugby at George Watson's College, an independent school in Edinburgh. His rowing was so good that he won silver at British junior level. But from an early age he had clicked on to the story of Graeme Obree, whose feats in the saddle he followed religiously.
What Hoy and Obree have in common is that they are Scots and have both railed against the UCI. Where they differ is that Obree battled depression and the UCI simultaneously and there were occasions when he conceded defeat to both. Obree has announced that in order to "drop all resentment and move on and out of that past world for ever", he has decided to sell all his medals and championship certificates.
"That's very sad," Hoy, who knows Obree well, said. "Graeme's still kind of the people's champion. He finds that very hard to embrace, unfortunately. I don't think he realises quite what an inspiration he was."
It would be fine - though clearly unlikely - if Obree were to enjoy Hoy's success and recognise that it comes with a mark of his own. For Hoy goes on and on and whatever the UCI has thrown at him he has overcome - officialdom, the kilo and the keirin field, too.
Winning streaks
Edwin Moses Athletics The American 400 metres hurdler was undefeated for nine years, nine months and nine days - 122 races - between 1977 and 1987.
Australia Cricket Smashed West Indies' record of 11 consecutive Test-match wins when they won 16 in a row between 1999 and 2001.
Byron Nelson Golf Tiger Woods has managed seven tournament wins in a row - and is on a winning streak of five in PGA Tour events - but he has some way to go before he beats Nelson's 1945 record of 11 straight PGA Tour wins.
Real Madrid Football The famous team of the late 1950s, boasting Alfredo Di Stefano and Ferenc Puskas, won the first five European Cups between 1956 and 1960.
Guillermo Vilas Tennis The Argentine clay specialist had an unbeaten run of 46 matches on all surfaces in 1977.
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