Rather than wade through one of Binoy's pieces, I will just agree with him that the games boycott will be ineffectual, not to mention half-hearted, if not downright cowardly on the part of our politicians.

The Communists don't give a damn if a few Western politicians or officials don't go to their games. Contestants will still be going.

If Western politicians had any backbones at all, they would ban contestants from competing. They can stop people from going overseas because of the epidemic from China. The they should be able to do the same because of the threat to us from China, as well as the lack of human rights in China.

Why was China given the rights to host the games in the first place off the back of their appalling record in just about everything?
The IOC have much to answer for...

This mess could be avoided had states not involved themselves in sports to begin with.

Sporting ought to be the private matter of athletes and possibly their individual supporters.

Governments that use sports to generate national-patriotic emotions, are no less guilty of that than their Chinese counterparts.

Nobody should be banned from going to China to compete, but then athletes should be clearly told that they could be arbitrarily arrested there, possibly also tortured and killed and no diplomatic effort would be able to help them out in such case.

I agree Yuyutsu. Governments should get the hell out of sport, & stop funding it, & stadiums to play it. They should also stop trying to glory in athletes success.

Back in the 50s we kids were part of a pony club fund raising effort to help send our equestrian team to the Olympics. These were the "real" good days when the Olympics were only open to amateurs. It took an Oz wide effort by those interested in amateur horses riding to raise enough, but boy weren't we repaid. Our team gave the Europeans, the main equestrians back them, a lesson they could not forget. They had to change the rules to bring us back closer to the field.

The 50s were our glory days, when our amateur, girls especially, made the track events their own.

With government involvement & professionalism, along came national prestige, quickly followed by drugs to secure that prestige. Now it is simply a TV event, which is at least a bit more interesting than reruns of "B" grade soapies.