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China has shown remarkable progress in international competitive sports since the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. A strong performance in the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games would add to these achievements, and China commissioned 100 Norwegian winter sport coaches and supporting staff to improve performance in cross country skiing, biathlon, and ski jump competitions in the run-up to the Games. This paper explores how the Norwegian coaches managed tensions that arose as the intimate coach-athlete rapport was placed within fraught geopolitical relations. The analysis draws on data from semi-structured interviews with Norwegian coaches, which covered motivations for training Chinese athletes, developments in athlete-coach relationships, and responses to criticism raised against the program for propping up an authoritarian regime. Preliminary analysis suggests that the coaches were aware of accusations of ‘sports washing,’ and mainly rebutted such criticism by highlighting the meaningful relationships they built with the athletes. The coaches claimed to improve the athlete’s lives for the time they were in the program, for example through providing pastoral care, time for rest and play, and good living conditions. Some coaches also regarded these athletes as potential vehicles for change in China once they were convinced of the values promulgated by the Norwegian coaching model, including independent thinking and respect for personal integrity. While such rationalization insulated the coaches from abstract geopolitical debates, they reencountered political differences when they tried to reconcile their own coaching models with the demands placed on the athletes by the Chinese sports bureaucracy.
