Britain

Fenced-in athletes

No opponent? No problem. Jo Muir is a modern pentathlon athlete and an Olympic hopeful for Team Great Britain. She is pictured here fencing with a tree at her parents’ farm in Haugh of Urr, a village in Scotland, on 27 April. Like many other athletes, she has had to find creative ways to train because of social distancing measures in place at the time.

This year’s Olympic hopefuls have been dealt a hard blow. Due to the coronavirus crisis, the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan, have been postponed until summer 2021. For an athlete, whose career may last only a decade — and whose peak is even shorter — a year is an eternity. Yet, athletes will have no choice but to reorganize their training programme, renew their motivation and finance another year of training.

Muir told Dailyrecord.co.uk that the delay “is frustrating from a selfish point of view”. She added, however, that she will be lucky if waiting a year to compete is the worst she suffers from the crisis.