McSharry on Olympics move
With the Tokyo Olympics now pushed back to July 2021, we speak to two local athletes on what this means to them
MONA McSharry’s hopes of reaching a first-ever Olympic Games are on hold after the International Olympic Committee and Japanese government announced the postponement of the event for a year.
The biggest sporting event to fall by the wayside since the onset of Covid-19, the Tokyo Games will now take place in late July and early August of 2021.
For Grange’s McSharry, it means her target of qualifying is delayed by a year as she seeks to represent her country in the pool at Olympic level.
For some time, the major date in McSharry’s diary was that of April 3rd, when she was set to participate in the Irish Open Swimming Championships at the National Aquatic Centre in Dublin.
It was at this meeting that the talented teenager needed to swim the time required in the 100m breaststroke to qualify for the games in Tokyo.
“It has upset everyone’s schedule, I guess,” McSharry told The Sligo Champion.
“It’s weird mentally - you had a timeline in your head and a plan laid out, but now that’s gone.
“Once the trials were cancelled, me and my coach knew what was coming and we were waiting for it to be announced.”
Having trained and prepared meticulously for the scheduled meet in Dublin this week, McSharry says she had begun to ‘taper down’ to be in the best possible shape for her defining swim - but now the process moves on, and attention switches to a big move across the Atlantic later this year.
The Olympics, however, remains her key goal. “I’m going to Tennessee in September to university, so I’ll be training there and in college. It’s [the Olympics] going to be a year later, so it’s just about waiting a year.”
The move stateside will offer the north Sligo swimmer a new way of preparation and training under a new system, and it is an opportunity she is looking forward too - though it could well be the case that McSharry will have to return to Ireland to try and swim the qualifying time next April.
“For any big competition, it’s usually a 16-week block [of training] and for me the last two weeks is to taper. But I’ll have a new training system in Tennessee.
“I’m not sure if they [Swim Ireland] are going off this year’s system or a new one, but I could have to come back around April next year [to swim in the trials]. But if I could swim it [the time] over there, that’d be great.”
As with every sport, there are widespread restrictions in place due to Covid-19.
This does not mean McSharry is not training, however. It merely means a change in approach.
“It has pretty drastically changed,” she says of her training.
“Obviously, the pools are closed and swimming is out of the question for the next month.
But my brother and I have got some gym weights, and I’m doing more aerobic sessions.”
Another local athlete who is impacted by the postponement of the Olympics for a year is karate champion Caradh O’Donovan.
The former kickboxer from the Strandhill Road reflected on a year of ups and downs as last summer she had to overcome a serious ankle injury.
Caradh told The Sligo Champion: “A few months ago, I could have listed plenty of ways that might have derailed my Olympic journey for 2020; Covid-19 certainly wasn’t one of them.
“Last week, the International Olympic Committee announced the inevitable postponement of the Olympic Games that were due to kick off this July in Tokyo. And with it, my dream was parked for a while.
“It of course was the right decision; placing public health over a sporting event should have happened sooner rather than later.
“It’s a surreal and worrying time for everyone as we try to deal with this global pandemic.
“People are getting sick and sadly some have lost their lives, with more loss of life likely.
“Many others have lost jobs, business and almost everyone is feeling the hit of the coronavirus.
“With the big picture in mind, an athletes Olympic dream is trivial.
“Flattening the curve and stopping the spread of this virus has to take precedence and so I was one of many athletes calling for the postponement of the Games for the weeks leading up to this decision.
“That said, I am also feeling emotional about the complete change in plans and the possibility that I may not be able to compete when (and if) the 2020 Olympic Games do eventually take place.”
Caradh said that training at such a high level is difficult now with all the important guidelines in place.
“With a combat sport, it is impossible to maintain social distancing and practice at a high level. So over the past few weeks all of my training had been cancelled.
“Stay at home as much as possible was the correct and safe message to follow. There’ll be a time to start training and resetting goals for sport and I’m hopeful that we can get through this pandemic and get back on track for 2021.
But it isn’t all doom and gloom. From my perspective as an athlete and athlete representative, there was a positive thing that came from this decision to postpone the Games.
“The impact that the collective voice of elite athletes had in forcing decision makers in the International Olympic Committee to act is an important step forward in giving athletes a say in how sport administration is conducted.
“In the weeks preceding the decision to postpone the Olympic Games, a number of athletes and athlete groups made public calls for the Games to be postponed and to make the health and welfare of athletes and the general public a priority.
“When the International Olympic Committee announced that they would require another four weeks to make a decision on postponement, Global Athlete (a group that I sit on the board of) released a statement critical of their stance and reaffirmed our position that the Games must be postponed.
“Our calls made their way to media across every continent on the globe and at the same time the Canadian and Australian teams consolidated the message by pulling their teams from the Games should they take place this summer.
“The ‘required’ four weeks then turned into hours and the International Olympic Committee and Japanese government announced that the Games would be put off until summer 2021 at the latest.”
Caradh added: “Following this, the Olympic Federation of Ireland affirmed that this indeed was the correct outcome - an affirmation that might have served them and Irish athletes better had they been braver to announce it ahead of their parent organisation in Lausanne.
“Of course, I’m reminded that there are enormous logistical and financial implications to moving this enormous event to next year and thus a delayed decision. My position however will always be putting the ‘people before the organisation’.
“This is the first time in history that an Olympic Games has been postponed and it could also be said that it’s the first time that pressure from elite athletes globally forced the hand of one of the most powerful sports organisations in the world.
“My passion in life is sport and competing in martial arts. The coronavirus is a pandemic that we will hopefully all get through but sports administration as it stands currently has its own virus. While it manifests through areas such as corruption, match fixing, cheating, doping and many more it isn’t helped by the fact that the athletes (the biggest stakeholders in sport) have little input in decision making. Maybe now athletes are beginning to realise their importance - if there are no athletes, there is no sport right?
The disparity in power between sports administrators and athletes when it comes to running sport is no longer good enough. There is now a growing movement and rising surge in athlete power and their voices.
“I hope that this becomes contagious and that momentum will continue so that by the time the Olympic Games do eventually happen, we will see different faces around the decision making table.
“While I cannot train currently, I am using this time to ensure that if and when sport does resume, that it will reset from a place that includes athletes both on the field of play and off it,” she added.