This can, however, be easily mitigated. They can all wear the filter masks the cycling team wore. (The Chinese Olympic Committee and government are offended? Fuck them.)
The press, again, needs to grow a pair and keep hammering the Chinese on their air quality. Picking Beijing to host is a mistake from a political and human rights perspective--it rewards the Chinese for doing nothing, and enables them to double-talk their way through it, in front of a world audience. And from a health perspective, they could have put the Games in a fucking coal mine and had the same effect. Putting people who depend on high-performing respiratory systems in one of the world's pollution capitals? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
