The elite and the damned: Beijing 2022 begins with dose of realpolitik

On the eve of these Olympics, which have been scarred by more controversy and tone deafness than any since Moscow in 1980, Thomas Bach was asked a simple question. What was his message to the Uighur population of China, who believe they are being repressed?

Say what you want about the president of the International Olympic Committee. But 36 years after he won a fencing gold medal, he retains an uncanny ability to parry and evade.

“With regards to the Uighur population, the position of the IOC must be to give political neutrality,” replied Bach, before offering a history lesson on how the Ancient Games in Greece came to an end after a thousand years because of Roman interference. “We are not commenting on political issues because … if we get in the middle of intentions and disputes and confrontations of political powers then we are putting the Games at risk.”

Bach was aiming for realpolitik, and also not to upset his hosts. The problem with his strategy was that it was bound to upset everyone else.

To claim an equivalence between the Chinese Communist Party and the Uighur muslims, the powerful and the powerless, the elite and the damned, was damning enough. But when set against the backdrop of harrowing stories of millions of Uighurs being forced into re-education camps, where some claim they have been raped or sterilised, his comments felt as cold as the tip of his old foil blade.

Human rights groups, who have dubbed these the “Genocide Games”, will attempt to keep the world’s attention on the issue by protesting outside the White House on Saturday. But in China, which denies any abuses in Xinjiang and calls the allegations the “lie of the century”, such criticism is an irrelevance. For them the focus of these Olympics