Wayne Chen
Northwest Asia Weekly
The Winter Olympics has always been an Olympian effort, if I ever saw it.
I’m not talking about athletes, although their dedication to their chosen sport is astounding as ever. And I’m not talking about any particular country winning a truckload of gold medals.
No, I’m talking about Beijing, the location of this year’s Winter Olympics.
I emphasize “winter” because this is the first Winter Olympics to be held in a city with almost no snow. From snowboarding and tobogganing to alpine skiing, every field is done on artificial snow. Olympic effort, indeed!
After watching some of the coverage on TV, I understood right away. Just off any piste, if you look closely in the background, you won’t see ordinary snow-covered fir trees in the background. What you see are low-lying bushes and foliage, or what someone like me living in Southern California might call “my backyard.”
That means the IOC awarded the Winter Olympics to a city without snow. In other words, snow is no longer necessary for a city to host the Winter Olympics.
I’m not trying to criticize China for hosting the Winter Olympics in a city without snow. The Olympics bring a lot of prestige to a city. I don’t mean to downplay experts’ warnings that future Winter Olympics will undoubtedly face similar changes due to climate change.
But this development does open up some interesting possibilities for me. If the Winter Olympics don’t need real snow, you can really hold it anywhere. Why not host the Winter Olympics in San Diego?
Here’s my 30-second elevator talk about getting San Diego to host the Winter Olympics:
- We could easily replace the giant slalom flag with a palm tree. This would be the perfect tropical winter wonderland!
- We can save a lot of money on the curling rink by using your local gym and replacing the curling stones with a Roomba vacuum – stiff competition and you’ll end up with a clean gym. Nothing beats killing two birds with one Roomba.
- Since running snow guns nonstop can get expensive, we can cut down on some less popular winter activities and introduce some new ones. Take biathlon as an example. In this sport, athletes ski until exhaustion, then stop to shoot at targets with rifles.
Personally, unless your name is James Bond, I just don’t think it’s a very useful skill. We could still call it biathlon, but instead of skiing and shooting, let’s adapt it to something more San Diego-related. How about a timed event where you can ski down to a local taco stand and eat some fish tacos?
But there’s one thing I won’t sacrifice – we need to keep skiing as an event. The only question now is, snow…or water?
Wayne can reach info@nwasianweekly.com.
