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Nordic combined skier Kristjan Ilves should be competing tomorrow. Instead, he will be watching on with sadness.
Ilves was the third member of the Estonian Winter Olympic team to test positive on arrival in Beijing.
“That’s gone,” he told CNN of his hopes of competing in Wednesday’s individual normal hill/10 km. “That’s what I’ve already accepted.”
Ilves says he has not yet tested negative since he arrived in Beijing almost a week ago, but he still holds some hope of competing in the individual large hill/10 km on February 15.
“Actually, in my head, I have to say that I may be quite over with the Olympics, if I can say so,” he says.
“So if I can compete, that’s a bonus. It looks a little unlikely, but I will say … there’s absolutely nothing I can do. I just can hope and wait.”
Initially, rules allowed athletes that had tested positive to leave isolation after 10 days, meaning Ilves would have made his second competition.
However, they have since been changed and athletes now require back-to-back negative tests to leave quarantine.
Even if he does make it out, Ilves admits the confined quarantined conditions — and the lack of a varied diet with the food — means he is no longer at his peak physical condition.
“I won’t say that it’s 100% over, but even if I possibly get out, I’m not like in the shape that it’s optimal for me,” he explained.
“And for the Olympics, I’m probably I will say 70% of my capacity or something … it would probably be quite low.”
Ilves is visited multiple times a day by people dressed in hazmat suits and says they come into his room five or six times a day for testing, taking his temperature and delivering food.
“It looks looks weird and insane,” he says.
“We are living, like, in the normal world and we have to do that kind of stuff here and it definitely takes down the value of the Olympics. Just, like, visually looks weird.”