Western critics of Russia’s Sochi Winter Olympics have picked up too much speed and risk skidding off piste. A justifiable attempt to scrutinise the government of President Vladimir Putin has degenerated into an exercise in schadenfreude and ill will. Politicians who have decided to attend the games (including China’s Xi Jinping, Japan’s Shinzo Abe and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan) have been level-headed. Those who have ostentatiously stayed away – the UK’s David Cameron, Barack Obama of the US and France’s Fran?ois Hollande – are following what the critic Harold Rosenberg once called “the herd of independent minds”.

Media interest in the alleged corruption around Olympic construction has been obsessive. The Washington Post describes the various projects as “Stalinist excess”. At a January press conference, Mr Putin set the cost of the games at Rbs214bn ($6.2bn) and said related infrastructure ran far higher. Western sources estimate the whole project at $51bn, with some claiming a third of it was improperly diverted. That is a lot. But it is a local story: a Moody’s report this week described the credit impact on Russia’s companies as “mixed” and on its sovereign debt as “neutral”. Nor is Sochi a unique moral blot. The Salt Lake City Winter Olympics of 2002 were marred by a major corruption scandal and the Beijing summer games of 2008 were a more appropriate venue for protests about human rights.

Certainly Mr Putin’s respect for the democratic process has been fitful at best. Political opponents have been arrested and jailed throughout his time in office, even if several were released in December. He cracked down on a peaceful demonstration in May 2012, and eight of those arrested are still facing trial. Such conduct merits scrutiny, even