TOKYO STRESS RISK
STRESSED Olympic athletes could see their medal chances go up in flames before they reach the start line, says top sports scientist Greg Whyte.
Medal hopes including Katarina Johnson-Thompson have said the pressure of not knowing whether the Tokyo Games will go ahead this summer is making training impossible. Reigning pole vault champion Katerina Stefanidis even claimed
athletes’ lives were being put at risk by an International Olympic Committee hell bent on staging the Games.
But Whyte, a former Olympic Modern Pentathlete, believes staying strong mentally during this uncertainty could be crucial to medal hopes.
He said: “Those athletes best able to cope with the disruption will be the successful ones.
“What KJT was alluding to is that it is incredibly hard being told the Olympics is on while test events and qualification events are on hold or cancelled.
“You do require that structure, belief, drive and commitment. If you think you have a competition coming up or a qualifier then it drives that belief.
“The critical thing is the uncertainty.”
Whyte says national federations and coaches will prove key to keeping athletes on an even keel mentally and believes there will be no increase in drug cheats in Japan, despite a possibly shortened run-in to the Games
He said: “If you run the London Marathon you don’t run in a brand-new pair of trainers out of the box.
“The idea you will be a month out thinking, ‘I’m not quite there do you know what, I am going to take drugs’ is unlikely as you would have no idea whether they might be negative.”
In contrast to the Olympic athletes, football has brought some certainty to proceedings.
But Whyte expects some nervous medical departments if and when the season resumes, given the interruption to training regimes.
He said: “Much of the strength and conditioning work they do is to prevent injury.
“If you come in undercooked the risk of injury is increased.
“Forward-thinking staff will create programmes for conditioning away from normal training.”