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Coffee House Shots

Should Britain boycott the Beijing Winter Olympics?

Coffee House Shots

The Spectator

News, Politics, Government, Daily News

4.42.1K Ratings

🗓️ 31 July 2021

⏱️ 15 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Team GB has had a brilliant start in Tokyo - can the government learn lessons on how to pick and nurture talent? And looking to the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022 - which foreign secretary Dominic Raab said he is 'very unlikely' to attend - should Britain boycott them? Katy Balls speaks to James Forsyth and Sebastian Coe, president of World Athletics and member of the International Olympic Committee.

Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:28.1

Hello and welcome to a special Saturday edition of Spectator Coffee House Shots.

0:33.6

I'm Katie Balls, and I'm joined by James Forsyfe Sebastian Coe, president of world athletics and member of the National Olympic Committee.

0:41.3

And we're talking about, you guessed it, the Olympics.

0:44.3

In Tokyo, we've had what was often a difficult start in the sense of COVID and how that would affect the games.

0:52.3

But Team G.B has quickly turned this into a very good

0:55.5

new story with medals coming in from lots of different places, some surprising.

1:00.0

Seb, you're joining us now. How's it been for you from where you're sitting?

1:04.3

Well, I'm very relieved to be here. Actually, given the year and a half we've all had,

1:09.0

I'm just actually relieved to be anywhere at the moment, but particularly in Tokyo, look, it's been a, it's been a difficult birth, given that

1:17.4

it was only really a year and two or three months ago that we knew that we weren't actually

1:24.1

going in 2020. We were going to have to go in 2020. When I take my hat off

1:27.7

to the local organising committee, because I can only imagine having chaired the London

1:32.4

organising committee if somebody knocked on my door in the headquarters in March or April of 2012 and said,

1:38.9

oh, by the way, your opening ceremony is not going on July the 27th that year we're going one year down the road you know the

1:46.9

the complexity and the challenge has been enormous and you know throw on to the top of that the fact

1:53.2

that we've had to get the athletes here safely and securely and also be you know recognized that

1:59.2

there are local fragilities about the thought of us all being

...

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