Editor’s Note: This is a satire piece from The Collegian’s opinion section. Real names and the events surrounding them may be used in fictitious/semi-fictitious ways. Those who do not read the editor’s notes are subject to being offended.

Ah, the Olympic Games: a time-honored celebration of athletics, competition, glory and national pride. It’s an event that brings the world together in a harmonious two-week period that shows off the best of us. The 2022 Beijing Olympics were deemed by many to be a mockery of these values, but simply put, that’s just a crock of shit. 

I’ve seen a lot of commentary lately saying the location choices for some of the events were questionable. I’m here to tell you that making these athletes compete surrounded by a toxic-looking, dystopian landscape was a purposeful decision. 

These men and women are competing in the biggest events of their young lives, so please ask yourself why the International Olympic Committee would try to distract them with beautiful scenery.

Before bitching and moaning about it being “weird” that there were “enormous chimneys that looked exactly like nuclear plants” behind the athletes, remember that it’s not about you, it’s about the athletes, duh.

Nothing is a better motivator to get some speed going down the hill than the terrifying shadow of an abandoned steel mill looming over your shoulder. 

“All this anti-performance enhancing drugs bullshit is just preventing us from watching two weeks of drug-fueled semi-superheroes duke it out on the world stage.”

Speaking of putting the athletes first, it’s time we talk about doping, folks. As we all know, Team Russia — excuse me, the Russian Olympic Committee — has been involved in another doping scandal. Fifteen-year-old Kamila Valieva tested positive for trimetazidine, a heart medication that supposedly is a performance-enhancing drug. So what? 

Why do we even care if athletes do drugs anymore? I mean, weed is legal in a bunch of states now, and other drugs, like mushrooms, are being decriminalized, so why can’t athletes do drugs?

Also — and hear me out on this — would it not be a more entertaining event if all the athletes were doped-up ‘roid-monsters? We’re talking about the athletic cream of the crop from around the world. All of them are already performing at peak human condition, so why not let them push it even further for our entertainment? 

All this anti-performance-enhancing drugs bullshit is just preventing us from watching two weeks of drug-fueled, semi-superheroes duking it out on the world stage. Just saying, it was right to let Valieva off scot-free, and not only that, we should just deregulate PED use altogether and let the other athletes who’ve been busted come back and compete.

Even with all this, the thing that really steamed me the most was everyone complaining about China hosting the games because of their “human rights violations” and that they are “running labor camps.” Like, who cares, am I right? Why do we always have to make sports political, people? It’s supposed to be about the competition, not about whether or not the host country is carrying out a well-hidden, methodical genocide of minority Muslim groups across the nation. 

And in terms of human rights violations, uh, the United States has been doing that shit for years, and we all know that America is always right, so if the U.S. does it, then it can’t be wrong. Simple logic, folks — try to keep up. 

In further defense of China, I’ve also seen some reports of athletes complaining they had to compete in dangerously freezing temperatures that were possibly threatening to their health. To all those athletes, I’ve got a newsflash for you: It’s the Winter Olympics, keyword there being “winter.” Yeah it’s going to be cold, and if you didn’t want to be a little chilly, then maybe pick a summer sport next time. 

Between the whining of the athletes, viewers and nations, the 2022 Winter Olympics were given an unfairly poor reputation. Once you pull the wool off your eyes and see all these so-called controversies for what they are, you realize that this year’s Games were magnificent and ground-breaking. They confronted outdated norms, and hopefully, we can go forward realizing the Games don’t need to change back to what they once were; they need to follow the Beijing model.

Reach JD Meltzner at letters@collegian.com or on Twitter @jd_meltzner.