The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Olympics ‘folly’ slammed by Pinsent
IOC should postpone Games, says rowing legend
Four-time Olympic champion Sir Matthew Pinsent believes it is “folly” for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to insist the Tokyo Games will go ahead.
IOC chairman Thomas Bach said on Tuesday that starting on schedule on July 24 remains the organisation’s goal, despite much of the sporting calendar being shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“I think it’s the IOC saying we must try and get through if we can, which I have a degree of sympathy with, it just runs counter to what every health authority and government is saying around the world,” Pinsent, 49, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“We’ve seen lockdowns across Europe and across Asia at different timescales but this is coming and the idea that the Olympics are going to carry on regardless I think is folly.
“On a global front we have other priorities and I think the Olympics should at the very least be saying we should postpone or indeed just cancel at this stage and we’ll talk about postponement later on.
“I just don’t think there’s much of a choice at this stage. For much of the European countries as well Asian countries, organised sport in any meaningful way has ceased and that’s from government advice.
“I don’t see there’s any way forward for an Olympic athlete to train effectively even as an individual but particularly in a team environment.
“I just think it’s unfair actually, I think it’s unfair almost for the Olympics to say we’re going to carry on, the Olympics are still happening, we are committed to the Olympics in July, because there are two big forces in an Olympic athlete’s life, which is the Olympics and everything else, and those two things are pulling in different directions at this moment and it’s very, very difficult for them individually when they’ve got that tension in their own heads.”
World Athletics president Lord Coe admits that the Games could logistically be held in September and October, but believes a decision does not need to be taken now.
“That is possible, anything is possible at the moment,” Coe, who was chairman of the London 2012 Games organiser, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“But I think the position that sport has certainly taken, and it was certainly the temperature of the room in the conversation I had the other day with the IOC and our other federations, is that nobody is saying we will be going to the Games come what may.
“And it may be that over the course of changing events, and they’re changing by the hour, that that is something that we have to confront. But it isn’t a decision that has to be made at this moment.”