Olympic Experience To Be Tainted in Beijing?

By Chad Klassen
Love of Sports Correspondent

The buzz around the Olympics doesn’t even come close to the parties thrown during the two weeks prior to the Super Bowl, when sports media and football fans alike gather in the host city to have a drunken good time.

That said, being around the atmosphere of an Olympic Games, whether it’s watching an event live or soaking in all the fun and entertainment of a city’s nightlife, is a tremendous experience (personally, I can’t wait for Vancouver 2010).

At the last two Summer Games, in Sydney and Athens, there were bands brought in to host concerts as well as street musicians and jugglers to perform outside venues just in order to make sure the visiting tourists were having a blast.

China, on the other hand, is desperately trying to get into the Guinness Book of World Records for the dullest and most boring Olympics ever held.

There are a myriad of reports coming out of Beijing that the city has battened down the hatches and put numerous restrictions on visitors that’ll make the Beijing Games feel more like the Bangkok Games.

For Olympic enthusiasts, even for the competing athletes, who think they’re traveling to the Far East to enjoy themselves … not so fast! China’s ramped up security measures to the point of paranoia, putting limits on how much enjoyment people can actually get out of the Summer Games.

The Olympic experience in Beijing could very well play out similar to the twisted game shows you see on TV in Japan. It won’t be so much about who has the most fun, but who can survive and endure the torture while still getting something out their time there.

The city’s hired extra police officers, as well as some civilian spies, to act as watchdogs by looking out for suspicious foreigners lurking around during the festivities. Certain groups of people, including businessmen who can’t obtain visas from the Chinese government, are banned from traveling to the area.

So, if you’ve got any kind of sexually transmitted disease, for instance, China doesn’t want your dirty malice.

For the people going, they might’ve wished they stayed home. Unlike in 2000 and 2004, outdoor gatherings have been banned, some of the music festivals have been cancelled, all encore performances need to be pre-approved and all bands playing have had their lyrics examined. There’s also a general ban on foreign entertainers who threaten China’s national sovereignty, whatever the hell that means.

Anyone interested in having a late-night drink or two with their buds will have to look long and hard for a place to serve them alcohol, or else just sneak their own flask and hard liquor into their luggage. Dance clubs and bars around the venues have already been shut down, and as for the Opening Ceremonies, the remaining bars in the city have been told to close down early before they begin. It’s merely another petty thing that’ll ruin the traditional nightlife fun that surrounds world events like this.

These kinds of security measures are definitely going overboard. It’s bound to undermine the Olympic spirit and tarnish people’s experience traveling to Beijing. These are same people who probably paid thousands of dollars to get a hold of tickets to their favorite event(s) and the same people who you want coming back to spend money in your city again.

But listen to this one.

Among all the other relatively lame restrictions, any spectators who are caught being patriotic with a banner professing love for their country will be thrown out of the stadium and put in jail for 15 days!! That basically means they’ll miss the rest of the Summer Games if they dare hold up a sign.

If I was one about to set off to Beijing right now (something I wouldn’t be doing in the first place), I wouldn’t be pushing my luck and formulating my own harebrained schemes to have fun. Besides going out to eat and traveling to the venues to watch the events, stay in your hotel to keep it safe, or you might eventually find yourself standing in front of some tank in Tiananmen Square protesting for your freedom and sanity back.

Buyer beware.