CHICAGO — Having visited Beijing annually since 2001, U.S. Olympic Committee chairman Peter Ueberroth has little patience for those who say China hasn’t changed in the seven years since the International Olympic Committee awarded it the 2008 Summer Olympics.
“That country has changed a great deal, and it’s opening up every single minute,” Ueberroth said Tuesday in a news conference here. “Anybody who wants to argue that subject is somehow blind. It is changing. Maybe people can argue if it’s changing fast enough.”
China’s critics have become increasingly vocal in recent weeks because of the approach of the Beijing Games and Chinese conduct in Tibet and the Sudan. The three U.S. presidential candidates have called on President Bush to snub the opening ceremony.
“I think the President is planning on going, and I hope he goes,” Ueberroth said during a media gathering focusing on the Beijing Games. “If he changes his mind, then so be it. It’s not something that’s going to dramatically impact our athletes at all.”
Ueberroth urged anyone choosing not to attend the opening ceremony to give their tickets to families of athletes who will be competing in the Games, which begin Aug. 8.
Ueberroth was in Beijing last week and flew directly to San Francisco to observe the Olympic torch relay, which attracted protesters and pro-China partisans, causing a change in its route.
“It’s kind of a cheap ticket to get on the public stage,” Ueberroth said. “These Olympic Games were awarded seven years ago, but now’s the time to show up, and that’s all right. We’re the free society, we hold ourselves as examples to the world. Free speech and the possibility of giving your opinion is the best thing in our country.”
USOC chief executive Jim Scherr said U.S. athletes are free to speak their minds.
“I think we would prefer that the athletes do what they want to do,” said Scherr, a former Olympic wrestler. “If they feel compelled to stick their neck out and make a statement, they can do so, as long as they do so within the rules of the IOC. . . . If they don’t want to do it, they shouldn’t feel undue pressure to be part of somebody else’s cause, because they’ve spent their entire lives training for this Olympic Games, and for many of them it’s their only opportunity.”
