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Beijing 2022: Olympics Team Canada chief ‘worried’ if Winter Games can go ahead as planned
- If the Canadian Olympic Committee has doubts about athlete safety it will not hesitate to pull the plug on Beijing, chief executive David Shoemaker says
- The greatest concern is getting the team into the Beijing bubble without testing positive for Covid-19 and facing three-to-five weeks’ quarantine in China
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With just over a month until the Beijing Winter Olympics opening ceremony, the chief executive of the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) said he is increasingly concerned if the Games can go ahead as planned.
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“We’re worried,” David Shoemaker told the CBC in a New Year’s Eve interview.
“We’re confident that these Games can still be scheduled safely. But we’re taking it day-by-day and wake up every morning to make sure that is how we still feel about it.”
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Covid-19 cases during Beijing Winter Olympics 'highly probable': health officials
Covid-19 cases during Beijing Winter Olympics 'highly probable': health officials
The National Hockey League last month said it would not send players to the men’s ice hockey tournament citing the pandemic’s “profound disruption” to its schedule.
As of Saturday, the NHL had postponed 90 games for Covid-19 related reasons.
Other winter sports have also experienced disruptions to events that serve as Olympic qualifiers, including alpine skiing, bobsleigh and curling.
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Shoemaker said that if the COC believes athlete safety is compromised it will not hesitate to pull the plug on Beijing, as it did in March 2020 when it decided not to send a team to the Tokyo Summer Olympics if it was to go ahead as scheduled.
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