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BEIJING. — Peng Shuai, the Chinese tennis player who largely disappeared from public life after making sexual abuse accusations against a political official in November, held a private meeting with Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee, in Beijing over the weekend.
The two had dinner on Saturday at the Olympic Club and were joined by Kirsty Coventry, the former chair of the Athletes’ Commission and an IOC member, according to a statement released by the IOC on Monday.
Coventry is also the Minister of Youth, Sport, Arts and Recreation in Zimbabwe and she is currently attending the Winter Olympic Games in Beijing.
The statement did not address Peng’s sexual assault accusations or the possibility of Bach pressing for an investigation of Peng’s claims, but it said that Peng was at the Winter Olympics and attending events, including a curling match between China and Norway on Saturday night. She also attended figure skating yesterday.
The revelation of the meeting might do little to satisfy critics who question whether Peng has been speaking freely in her sporadic and seemingly highly orchestrated public appearances over the past few weeks.
Mark Adams, a spokesman for the IOC, declined to say on Monday whether the committee believed Peng’s initial claim that she had been sexually assaulted. She made the claim in November on a verified account on a Chinese social media platform, but has since recanted. Adams also declined to say whether the committee believed she was speaking under duress from government officials.
“I don’t think it’s a judgment for the IOC to make — we are a sporting organization,” Adams said at the IOC’s daily news conference in Beijing.
He noted that the organisation had remained in constant communication with Peng in recent weeks to ensure that she was physically safe.
“I don’t think it’s up to us to be able to judge, just as it’s not for you to judge, either, in one way or another, her position,” he said.
Peng’s disappearance from public view late last year prompted a global chorus of concern for her safety. In November, the IOC scheduled a video call between Bach and Peng that confirmed she was in China and apparently unharmed. The organisation did not release a transcript of that call and has not released transcripts or recordings of any of its subsequent interactions with Peng.
On Saturday, according to the IOC, Peng told Bach that she was disappointed that she hadn’t qualified for the Summer Olympics in Tokyo last summer, but planned to travel to Europe “once the pandemic was over.” It added that Coventry and Peng would remain in contact and that “all three agreed that any further communication about the content of the meeting would be left to her discretion.”
Bach had said last week that the IOC would call for an official inquiry into Peng’s initial sexual assault accusations only if she had asked them to do so.
In response to a question about whether the IOC had discussed a potential investigation with anyone, Adams referred journalists yesterday to an interview Peng conducted with L’Equipe, a French sports daily, that was published yesterday. In it, Peng once again claimed that the situation, and her accusation, had been a misunderstanding.
The hour-long interview with Peng, according to L’Equipe, was arranged on Sunday by China’s Olympic Committee. — New York Times
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