What's more embarassing, our cyclists showing up in Beijing with masks or them now asking for an apology?

They already knew how they where going to fare so didnt want to be recognisedNo cyclist from the U.K. wore a mask They didnt do too bad..

The Olympic committee gave out those masks. The cyclists chose to wear them because of all of the pollution in Beijing. Nobody knew that Beijing had cleaned itself up.

Maybe they only wore them when they first showed up, or they were waiting on an official word that it was "all clear." Then the committee went off on them and told them to apologize for doing something they had not only told them to do, but provided for them.

The whole thing is ridiculous and stupid. It would be like when I was in the army, if I showed up somewhere wearing my gas mask and there weren't actually gas attacks - should I apologize for putting it on?

Or how about when our soldiers come back from this stupid war in Iraq we have each one of them issue an apology for anything they may have done over there - after all, it's not the government's fault for telling them to go over and then giving them all the weapons to do those things.

Give me a break.

They were asked to wear the masks, they didn't decide that on their own. And Beijing was / is still polluted. If you watched any of the shots from the air, you could often see a haze. It wasn't fog either.

The masks were for the pollution which is the worst in the known world.

I thought people knew that.