Switzerland is not the only nation to have discovered that the Olympic Games and democracy have become incompatible bedfellows. This is unlikely to change any time soon. “And the winner is … Beijing.” This summer’s announcement by the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Thomas Bach, of the hosts of the 2022 Winter Games was met around the world by a large sigh. Staging the world’s biggest winter sports event in a smog-ridden megalopolis without any snow and a record of human rights violations during the 2008 Summer Games in the same city – frankly, it doesn’t seem a very good idea. However, the choice of candidates for the 2022 Games had become so limited that the only remaining contender besides Beijing was Almaty, a city in south-east Kazakhstan, another Asian dictatorship. Munich (Germany), St Moritz-Davos (Switzerland) and Kraków (Poland) had pulled out as a result of public votes on the issue. Stockholm, Lviv and Oslo all dropped ...
