Peng Shuai cloud hangs over Australian athletes in Beijing

Australia’s Winter Olympic hopefuls, who’ve arrived in Beijing for World Cup events, forced to deal with strict Covid-19 countermeasures and the still-unresolved Peng Shuai scandal.

Australian snowboard cross competitor Belle Brockhoff is competing in China this weekend to confirm Olympic qualification for the Beijing Olympics. Picture: File

When Belle Brockhoff and other Australian snowboard and skier cross athletes arrived in Covid-cautious China this week, they were greeted by officials, masked and gloved – but with prominent “welcome to Beijing” messages on the back of their full length plastic hazmat suits.

Having landed at the Beijing Winter Olympic test event on a charter flight from Frankfurt for Friday’s season opening World Cup, snowboard cross star Brockhoff – who has a Chinese grandmother – was taken aback at plastic-wrapped lifts and hotel corridors that were sprayed with disinfectant every hour.

Athletes are also subject to daily testing, they must eat alone, and they are even required to wear a mask at the top of the particularly chilly and windy competition run.

For the international athletes, especially those that have experienced relatively few restrictions in Europe of late, the zero-Covid policy and tight policing of the rules of China, which will be also in force for the three weeks of the Olympics next February, has come as a shock.

Also lurking in the background of this World Cup competition are the geopolitical rumblings around tennis player Peng Shuai and the treatment of the Uyghurs.

Do the athletes want to talk? Or if they do, when or how do they speak up?

Peng’s situation – detailing an alleged sexual assault against a high ranking Chinese official on a social media platform – has yet to be fully clarified.

The three-time Olympic tennis player has still not spoken publicly and the International Olympic Committee, whose president Thomas Bach spoke to Peng on a video link, has been accused by athlete lobby groups of helping China establish a pretence that all was well so that Games preparations could continue untroubled.

Brockhoff, who hasn’t been shy about speaking up in the past, is weighing up the situation and others are known to be deeply uncomfortable as some western countries threaten diplomatic boycotts for the Games and other protest measures.

This week, a Global Times editorial said anti-Chinese sentiment was an ideological battle and that “conflicts’’ would escalate.

“The ideological conflicts between China and the west will escalate before the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022 as anti-Chinese forces will converge to make trouble for China,” the English language mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party said.

“China used to care about maintaining a harmonious atmosphere with the west and the way being regarded by the rest of the world, particularly by the west. This needs to be changed.”

It will be a silly show if the Five Eyes Alliance conducts a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics. If the US wants to bring the differences between major powers to the Olympics, let it be. China has no reason to feel uncomfortable: Editor-in-Chief Hu Xijin #HuSayspic.twitter.com/mArWt0yfd0

— Global Times (@globaltimesnews) November 23, 2021

This weekend’s competitions will thus be a test of many sorts.

Brockhoff, 28, said even with Covid countermeasures in place, the Chinese had prepared the competition course well and the accommodations at the Secret Garden resort, about three-and-a-half hours northwest of Beijing, was spacious and new.

“I want to win, I love racing, I’ve been funded by the Australian government to be here and I am aiming for the top position,” Brockhoff said, declaring she was the fittest she had been after dealing with two previous knee operations.

She starts the World Cup season as the reigning champion, having combined with Olympic champion Jarryd Hughes to win the world team event last January.

Being in China for the first time is fascinating for the Victorian, who can understand some basic words of Mandarin.

Belle Brockhoff competes in snowboard cross at the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. Picture: File

Brockhoff’s grandmother, Tan Swee Hom, fled China during World War II. She arrived in Australia without a cent to her name and raised nine children, including Brockhoff’s mother Kristine.

Brockhoff hails her mother as her inspiration and said her grandmother, who died more than five years ago, was always perplexed about her pursuing a sports career, rather than becoming a doctor or a lawyer.

“I’ve started doing a law degree, so that would have made her happy,” said Brockhoff, a two-time Olympian.

Joining Brockhoff and Hughes in Beijing are fellow Australians Cameron Bolton, Adam Lambert, Adam Dickson, Josie Baff and Mia Clift. Other Australians are also preparing for Olympic qualifying competitions this weekend in short track speed skating in Dordrecht, the Netherlands, bobsleigh and skeleton in Innsbruck, Austria, luge and biathlon in Sochi, Russia and an Alpine World Cup in Killington, United States.