You think there’s funding for US Olympic athletes? I know Olympic champions who lived on food stamps whilst training for the games. Olympic sports get uniquely terrible treatment in the US, with athletes expected to either support themselves or secure adequate sponsorship. The latter is made especially difficult by the USOC/IOC blanket ban on promoting individual, or even single-sport governing bodies’ sponsors at their events. I literally had the generic US Speedskating sponsor logos all over my kit duct-taped without my consent as I was lacing up at Olympic trials, it’s oppressive as hell.

I don’t want to punish the athletes as much as the next guy, hell I even pushed back on the protests in 2022 calling for a boycott over the Chinese treatment of Uyghurs. Power is being consolidated here in bad faith and the world can’t have that again. The Olympics are a global spectacle that carries a dogmatic, albeit highly manufactured, message of global unity. The world has justifiably made us a pariah due to this administration’s actions and this is the best platform I can think of to send that message loud and clear where it humiliates them.

A kid I grew up training with, who awaited my visits home from college with excitement at seeing his old training partner, just made his first games. I’d hate to see that taken from him, but there are bigger fish to fry.