West Central Reporter

U.S. Rep. Darin LaHood (R-Peoria) of the House Intelligence Committee requested that the US Olympic Committee protect the U.S. athletes from personal data mining and censorship of their free speech while at the upcoming Winter Olympic Games in China. 

"I joined my House Intel Committee colleagues @RepBradWenstrup, @CongressmanRaja and @RepJasonCrow to urge the US Olympic Committee to take additional steps to protect US athletes from China’s efforts to suppress free speech and mine their personal data at the 2022 Winter Games," LaHood said in a post to his official Twitter account on Jan. 20. 

The New York Times reported that there is a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics, as government representatives from the U.S., Australia, Britain, and Canada will not be in attendance.

The Los Angeles Times reported in a December 2021 story that there were two main candidates to host the Winter Olympics this year: Beijing, and a city in Kazakhstan named  Almaty. Beijing won the vote by a narrow margin. China has stated that the United States will 'pay a price' for boycotting their Olympics.  

A diplomatic boycott does nothing to prevent American athletes from competing in the Beijing Winter Olympics, according to the New York Times. Beijing's odds of landing the Winter Olympics when they were first awarded increased significantly when several major European cities, such as Oslo and Stockholm, withdrew from bidding on them, balking at the high price of hosting the games, according to the Los Angeles Times. The controversy that has since emerged was not initially anticipated with IOC president Thomas Bach at first calling Beijing "a safe choice." 

Examples of the kind of price tags that an Olympic games can bring are $40 billion for Beijing in 2008 and $51 billion for Russia in 2014, according to the Los Angeles Times.