Chinese Tent, Shoot Triathlete With Broken Leg

In a stark display of the Chinese Olympic team’s motto “Win Or Don’t Go Home,” government authorities placed a small portable tent over triathlete gold medal hopeful Gong Fan-Qi and shot him after Liu shattered his leg in an accident during the cycling portion of Monday’s event.

“It’s what Gong would have wanted,” Chinese Olympics spokesman Lin Biau told a hastily assembled Beijing news conference. “He was expected to win a gold medal and he was way behind coming out of the swim. After his bicycle slipped on some tacks that had been thoughtlessly strewn in his path, we had no choice but to take him out of his misery.”

China leads in the gold medal count but trails the United States in the overall medal tally, a subject of grave embarrassment among Chinese officials.

“Gong was headed for a fourth place finish,” Mr. Lin explained. “Naturally, we are proud that he would have completed the race as the fourth-best triathlete in the world. But they don’t give medals for fourth place, so finishing in that position would have brought great shame on Gong’s family, village, triathlon coach, and the entire Chinese Olympic team. So after his most unfortunate accident, we did the humane thing. All of China is saddened by this unexpected tragedy.”

When informed that spectators had seen other Chinese officials strewing tacks in the expected path of Gong’s bicycle, and that other officials had been seen five minutes before the accident, carrying a tent in the direction of where the accident would take place, and test firing an .08 caliber weapon, Mr. Biau offered a terse “no comment.”