The gold medal will go to Covid if Games go on

Iam an Olympholic. I have been since 1964, after my first sip of the magnificent middledistance athlete Peter Snell.

Every four years I get my fix, weeping with Kiwi rowing eights, shooters from South Canterbury, hockey gold medallists, cyclists, throwers, runners and rowers.

Anthems, podiums, Olympic rings, medals, flag raising and Faster, Higher, Stronger, the rousing Olympic motto, more please.

In 2012, my horrified wife found me wet-eyed over the women’s London Olympics archery final.

To be fair, I was under cancer treatment at the time, and fearing it might be my last Games.

But yes, I have a problem.

It got so bad I’ve broken the four-year cycle to go back in time, often to drink in the men’s 1500m at Berlin in 1936. I watch enthralled, as if I don’t know Kiwi Jack Lovelock wins, yelled on by a famous commentary.

Oh, and I’ve not confined myself to only a taste of Kiwi. My Olympholicism knows no geographic limits. I’ve been brought to my feet by athletes from dozens of nations, watching live at three Olympics, on the couch, or sneakily at work.

Terrorists didn’t kill my lust in 1972, nor did boycotts in 1976 and 1980, or Zika virus in 2016. But now?

Now it’s the Covid statistics in Japan that are going Faster, Higher, Stronger, rather than the Olympic athletes. Where they will be in two months, when the Games are due to open is guesswork.

Japan has just hit its second peak of cases for 2021, with this week’s seven-day average at nearly 6000 a day.

That’s about 20 times higher than in July last year, when the 2020 Tokyo Olympics were due to be held. Tokyo has had 143,000 covid cases, with nearly 2000 deaths.

I’m no epidemiologist, so let me quote one, in Michael Baker: ‘‘Staging the Olympics will kill people’’.

Japan is already in a fix. And then you add thousands of athletes and officials from across the world – no spectators are allowed – what you appear to have created is a great big coronavirus melting pot, big enough to take the world and all it’s got, as the song goes.

India just tried to hold the IPL, a multi-million dollar cricket league in which players in full protective gear, staying in flash hotels, and moving in travel bubbles still had their defences breached. The IPL was suspended, and overseas cricketers were left scrambling to leave their supposed Eldorado.

If the IPL didn’t work, how can the Olympics with all its added negatives and complications work?

So let’s weigh up the odds for holding the Olympics.

Less coronavirus: a positive (Japan 10,296 deaths as of May 3; India 218,959).

More athletes: a negative.

More stadiums: a negative.

More transport: a negative.

More communal living: a big negative.

More mixing of nationalities: usually a positive and a joy, not this time.

When the IPL fell over, New Zealand Cricket had only to get 17 people out of India, on chartered flights.

New Zealand sent 199 athletes to Rio in 2016, where 207 countries participated. Let’s see that lot get out fast, if it all falls off the parallel bars.

And sadly, based on the evidence of the past annoying, frustrating and restrictive 14 months, it seems more likely than not a final showdown between the Olympic Games organisers and coronavirus, will end with the gold medal going to Covid 19.

A poll taken with 100 days to go, showed 70 per cent of Japanese don’t want the Games to go ahead. If they don’t, athletes will be gutted after giving their all, so will exhausted officials. And this Olympholic will be disappointed.

But when the three values of Olympism are excellence, friendship and respect, leaving the Japanese people in peace would exemplify those qualities better than holding the Games amid medical mayhem.

I’ll climb off the podium now.

I’ve loved and been loyal to the games through terrorism, Zika and boycotts, but holding the games in a pandemic is madness.