West sees muck even in gold

The attempts of the West to discredit the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games were evident much before the opening ceremony on Friday. The Sochi Olympics is a sports event, but the West has used it as a political tool against Russia, much like it used the Beijing 2008 Summer Games to criticize China, says a Xinhua commentary.

The West's rhetoric is old-fashioned: alleged corruption, overrunning costs and human rights infringements. Even opinion polls favorable to Russia, especially the one by Gallup that said "Russians see gold in Sochi Olympic Games", could not change the West's attitude.

The run-up to the Beijing Olympics, too, had seen the Western media reveling in negative coverage, primarily because of ideological and political differences between the West and China.