GB not likely to be able to send a team should Olympics go ahead

Great Britain are unlikely to be able to send a team to Tokyo should the Olympic Games go ahead as scheduled despite the coronavirus pandemic, the chairman of the British Olympic Association has warned.

Hugh Robertson welcomed the International Olympic Committee’s announcement that it is now spending the next four weeks looking at contingency scenarios following the outbreak, which include postponement.

However, he warned that due to the widespread closure of training facilities and the likelihood that the impact of coronavirus in Britain will worsen over the coming weeks, there is almost certainly no way Team GB could compete if the Games were given the green light for this summer.

“I think it is very simple. If the virus continues as predicted by the government, I don’t think there is any way we can send a team,” he told Sky Sports News.

“And I base that on two things. Firstly, I don’t see any way that the athletes and Team GB could be ready by then.

“Elite training facilities are perfectly understandably and quite correctly closed around the country, so there is no way they could undertake the preparation they need to get ready for a Games.

“Second, there is the appropriateness of holding an Olympic Games at a time like this,” he added.

“We are actually in a process where we are talking to all our sports. We will complete that over the next couple of days. At the end of that we have already said to the IOC that we think their four-week pause is absolutely the right thing to do.”

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This isn’t the first time he has put his own motives above the athletes and the movement. CALLUM SKINNER ON IOC PRESIDENT THOMAS BACH

The Canadian Olympic and Paralympic committees have already announced they will not compete in Tokyo this summer, while the Australians have told their athletes to prepare for a postponement to the summer of 2021.

The BOA, the British Paralympic Association and funding body UK Sport will hold a conference call with the chief executives and performance directors of the summer Olympic and Paralympic sports tomorrow to discuss the impact of the Covid-19 outbreak.

Although the British bodies may not gone as far as Canada have in saying they will not send a team, there is growing anticipation that they will make a collective call for the Games to be postponed and to advise athletes to prepare on that basis.

Boris Johnson’s official spokesman said: “We want the International Olympic Committee to make a definitive decision soon to bring clarity to all of those involved.”

A leading figure on the BOA’S athletes’ commission has described IOC president Thomas Bach as arrogant and stubborn over the organisation’s approach to the coronavirus pandemic.

Callum Skinner, a 2016 Olympic cycling champion, was scathing about Bach in a social media post yesterday.

“IOC president Thomas Bach’s stubbornness and arrogance has spectacularly failed in this instance and he has weakened the Olympic movement,” Skinner wrote on Twitter.

“This isn’t the first time he has put his own motives above the athletes and the movement.”

Skinner’s post praised those national Olympic committees and international sports federations which have already expressed opposition to the Games going ahead as scheduled.

Picture: PA. Team GB chairman Sir Hugh Robertson.