A large number of athletes, coaches, and officials are protesting the poor living conditions, limited food options, crippling weather measures, and isolated sleeping quarters provided by the administrators of the Beijing Olympics.
The food for the athletes is subpar, according to German Alpine skiing coach Christian Schwaiger.
The dining options are not only limited, but they also present a challenge to keeping the Olympians fueled for competition, he said.
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“The catering is extremely questionable because really it’s not catering at all,” Schwaiger said. “There are no hot meals.”
“There are crisps, some nuts and chocolate, and nothing else. This shows a lack of focus on high-performance sport.”
Team USA officials, possibly recognizing the poor catering of the Chinese organizers, brought a surplus of food, including bags of pasta, to Beijing, according to a report.
Precautions and policies regarding COVID-19 have also hindered the athletes in the Olympic Village, Russian biathlon competitor Valeria Vasnetsova said.
“I only sleep all day because I don’t even have the strength to get out of bed. I only eat three handfuls of pasta a day because it’s just impossible to eat the rest of the food,” according to the athlete. “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.”
“I’ve been getting this for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for five days now. 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,” Vasnetsova said in a now-deleted Instagram post.
The athlete detailed how her hunger forced her to eat all the fat from a piece of meat.
Not all the athletes are receiving the same food, with some getting meals far worse than others, Vasnetsova said.
China’s COVID-19 precautions are so scary and confusing that they brought Belgian skeleton racer Kim Meylemans to tears.
Athletes who test positive but are asymptomatic are required to isolate in a detached hotel, while those who present symptoms are forced to be hospitalized immediately.
After she tested positive, she was taken to an isolated location when she believed she would be returning to the Olympic Village, Meylemans said.
The hotel accommodations are “unreasonable,” according to Dirk Schimmelpfennig, the head of the German delegation.
The conditions were beyond poor for Eric Frenzel, a three-time gold medalist, Schimmelpfennig said.
One Finnish hockey player who tested positive for COVID-19 18 days ago, Marko Anttila, who played in the NHL for the Chicago Blackhawks, has not been allowed to rejoin his team despite testing negative.
“Marko has been with our team for about a week before we came here and he tested negative,” his head coach, Jukka Jalonen, said. “We know that he’s fully healthy and ready to go and that’s why we think that China, for some reason, they won’t respect his human rights and that’s not a great situation.”
Chinese officials have also failed to schedule events at the best times for athletes to deal with brutal weather conditions, Anders Bystroem, a Swedish team official, said.
“We have the cold limits we have, there is not much to say about that. I do not know if they also measure the wind effect,” he said. “If FIS says it’s -17 degrees and it’s windy, and it’s -35 degrees with the wind chill, what do you do then?”
“The women’s skiathlon on Saturday at 4:00 p.m. and Frida Karlsson was completely destroyed by the cold. It’s not good that the sprint starts even later … At the same time, I don’t think it will be possible to change the time because of the Olympic schedule.”
“We are aware of the complaints raised by some athletes, particularly with regard to food temperature, variety and portion size. The issues are currently being addressed together with Beijing 2022 and the respective management of the facilities concerned,” the International Olympic Committee said in a statement.
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“We feel for every athlete who cannot compete because of a Covid-19 infection. The protocols have been put in place to ensure safe Olympic Games for everyone. All the cases are managed in full accordance with the rules stated in the Playbooks and in the adjustments which were made to the protocols.”
