because of Chinese quarantine restrictions on the horses being too much of a pain to deal with?? How weird is that?!?
Not that weird -- it's always been an issue in animal sports to have really international competition when a few countries make it very difficult either to host competitions or to allow their own competitors to travel internationally. The UK used to be especially bad, but they've always made exceptions for the Olympics (especially since they've hosted a metric asston of times). Some of that has eased up a bit since disease tracking got more modern and less handwavey.
eta: As noted, Hong Kong is China, but Sumi, do you know if quarantine regs are different there than the mainland?
HK got its own Olympic team when it was still a British colony - apparently, the only reason for it continuing is tradition? Perhaps HK likes not being fully assimilated back into the mainland?
I guess Bugs Bunny is the reference. It rings a faint bell.
After posting it rang a bell to me, too - not of actually remembering it, but rather of a Buffista (I wanna say Jon B) explaining it to me.
[Edit: And Kathy's answer was even better than what I managed to Google. I love the hivemind.]
I believe the U.S. territories that can have their own Olympic teams are Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, Canada, and U.S. Virgin Islands.
I knew it was Bugs Bunny, but I didn't know it was (more) literary on top of it. Kind of creepy, now, too. If what I remember of the fate of the little fuzzy things is correct.
Kristen! It's been forever since I posted with you! How are you doing?
Canadia get its own team???
Hong Kong IS China.
Oh, duh. Forgot that it is now, in the reading about the weirdness of quarantine and that being the reason for having dressage and evening being waaaaay off elsewhere. I just thought that was so sad--apparently hardly any of the equestrians went to the opening ceremonies because they would've had to fly there and back and lose days of training!
