China’s delegation to the 2024 Summer Olympics denied bringing air conditioning units to Paris on Thursday after videos appearing to show Chinese staffers packing planes with hundreds of units surfaced on China’s Douyin (Tiktok) social media application.
Reports that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) approved sending its Olympians to France with their own air conditioning units followed months of reports of conflict between Paris Olympics organizers and various international delegations. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has promised to host the “greenest ever Games” and has boasted extensive use of recycled materials, plant-based athlete menus, and a “geothermal cooling” system in Olympic Village rooms instead of standard air conditioning. Multiple delegations protested, and some, including Western nations, announced they would plan to pack their own air conditioning units, arguing that depriving athletes of adequate cooling in the extreme French summer heat is a liability for performance and potentially dangerous.
While the Chinese team did not protest as vocally as other delegations, videos surfacing on Douyin, the regime-controlled version of TikTok that is available only in China, showed the delegation diligently packing its airplane with what appeared to be air conditioning units. The South China Morning Post — a Hong Kong-based newspaper that the regime-friendly megacorporation Alibaba owns — reported definitively on July 17 that “China has supplied its athletes with AC units, bypassing the organisers’ carbon emission reduction efforts.”
“China will join Australia, the United States, Great Britain and Hong Kong in bringing their own climate control with them,” the Morning Post continued, “although organisers compromised to permit teams to order portable air-conditioning units at their own expense.”
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The head of the Chinese Olympic delegation, Zhang Xin, denied the reports in a press conference on Thursday.
“It is not true that we brought over 300 air conditioners with us,” Zhang said, according to the Chinese state propaganda outlet Global Times. “The Olympic Village can provide portable air conditioning rental services, and the delegation will assess the weather conditions and the need for air conditioning.”
The Times interpreted Zhang’s comments as claiming that the team did not bring any of “their own air conditioning,” though Zhang specifically denied only reports of the “300 air conditioners” in the comments that the newspaper reproduced, leaving open the possibility that the Chinese team brought more or fewer units.
Zhang also denied that the Chinese team brought its own mattresses to the Olympics in response to reports that Paris organizers had offered uncomfortable “eco-friendly” mattresses for athletes staying in the Village.
“Interpreting one mattress as the entire delegation bringing their own mattresses, which is also inaccurate,” Zhang said in his denial, suggesting that at least some athletes did pack their own mattresses.
“Each delegation is assigned accommodation with different cooling systems, and the Olympic Village provides rental services for portable air conditioners,” the Global Times added.
The Chinese state outlet omitted that Olympic officials reportedly did not originally plan to provide air conditioning at all.
“We designed these buildings so that they would be comfortable places to live in in the summer, in 2024 and later on, and we don’t need air conditioning in these buildings,” Yann Krysinski, the director of infrastructure for the Paris Olympics, said in March, “because we oriented the facades so that they wouldn’t get too much sun during the summer, and the facades, the insulation is really efficient.”
In a summary of “sustainable” practices at the Olympics, the IOC still boasted on Thursday that the athlete residence still “employs a geothermal cooling system instead of traditional air conditioning” in addition to several other features that will allegedly “cut the footprint by 50 per cent compared to the London 2012 and Rio 2016 average, aligning with the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.”
The British Daily Mail reported on Wednesday, a day before the IOC published the sustainability report, that Paris organizers ordered “thousands of air conditioning units” for the Village in response to widespread objections to the lack of traditional cooling systems for athletes:
With growing concerns that athletes might be under-rested ahead of the biggest days in their sporting careers, the IOC relented and allowed competitors to order compact units on their “rate cards” – the traditional way for participants to order certain products for use during the Games.
Multiple delegation heads warned that not properly cooling facilities could endanger the athletes.
“In our conversations with athletes, this was a very high priority and something that the athletes felt was a critical component in their performance capability and the predictability and consistency of what they’re accustomed to,” Sarah Hirshland, CEO of the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC), said.
Canada, Great Britain, Italy, Germany, Greece, Denmark, Japan, and Australia were reportedly openly planning to bring their own air conditioning. The Italian women’s volleyball team moved into a hotel.
“We appreciate the concept of not having air conditioning due to the carbon footprint,” Australian Olympic Committee CEO Matt Carroll said. “But it is a high-performance Games. We’re not going for a picnic.”
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