[Channel 4 News] China pollution KOs marathon bid

2008.03.10

By Lucy Manning:

"Ethiopia's marathon world record holder Haile Gebrselassie blames pollution for his decision not to run in the Beijing Olympics marathon.

He's the world record holder - but Haile Gebrselassie won't be running the marathon in this summer's Olympic games.

The Ethiopian runner, who suffers from asthma, said the massive pollution in China was a threat to his health.

Gerbselassie said he would compete in the 10,000 metre event instead.

He's not the only runner to express worries about China's climate problem. Britain's Paula Radcliffe has called in pollution experts to help her Olympic plans."

Category:

Sports

Tags:

• Channel4
• News
• Olympics
• Beijing
• games
• China
• pollution
• marathon
• Haile
• Gebrselassie
• run
• environment
• smog
• emissions

[Caramonn]

Pollution is killing us but no one makes a move to change this situation. The world will never be able to recover and we will suffer this terrible crisis very soon.

[SLASH57062]

actually.... china only surpassed america just this year. and they're both pretty much the same in pollution levels. you also need to look at the numbers living in each country. you say china doesnt care about pollution. well there are over a billion people in china and about 300 million americans. per capita americans are releasing 3x as much pollution as china. not to mention the fact that america are already a developed nation and dont need to release that pollution.

[0ct0ct09]

Channel 4 News posted on Mar 10, 2008. This clips keeps playing over and over. Channel 4 why don`t you do a follow up story on China pollution since the  marathon. I would like to see if anything has changed or not.

[watup2154]

Actually China is like a Kingdom ---

where only the Royal Family --

in this case China's Communist Party --- Prospers

all Chinese people are Slaves of the Royal Communist Party ---

This Royal Communist party has successfully ISOLATED chinese Slaves from the World and ISOLATED the World from Reaching inside china

just incase the SLAVE LABOR gets AWARENESS about their rights -

& wat facilities outside World ppl are enjoying ---

& start asking for their Universal Human Rights

[bootycentral]

per person statistics don't take into account the massive population of china over the united states.

[BillyBobTS]

No china is the biggest polluter actually.

[dahgutone]

Yes, China has 4 times the population of Americans. BUT, spite the population fact, the US still burns TWICE as much co2 emissions than China. Thats 2.89 billion metric tons compared to the US's 5.47 billion metric tons.

[dahgutone]

You think it's fair to say that most of the Chinese are pollutors are just as bad as Americans when there are millions of people in China who don't even own a car?Electricity? Or even take a bus? While in the US, amost everyone has a privilage to burn ALOT of co2 emissions? No, it isn't. Yes two major cities have horrible smog, but they are still well behind the US pollutants.

[BillyBobTS]

Yea and china has like triple americas population so that's a rather moot point.

[dahgutone]

Americans use 5 times more tons of co2 emissions per person on average compared to China.

[JAMESzzify]

PLus, Haile Gebreselassie never steps to the plate for world champs or olympics anyways, he didnt run in the berlin world champs, he's scared of the london marathon and may be the pressures of beijing olympics was too much for him. some people run best with less expectation from them

[JAMESzzify]

on reflection, all this pollution fuss was nothing, the marathon runners still did excellent times, well done samual wanjuri....