Olympic Games in jeopardy
As virus spreads, we wait
The spreading virus from China has been reported in more than 60 countries and puts the Tokyo Olympics at risk. The Olympics are to open on July 24 — less than five months away. The Paralympics follow on Aug. 25.
IOC President Thomas Bach, in an interview last week limited to Japanese media, said the “IOC is fully committed to have the opening ceremony there on July 24th in Tokyo.” He declined to speculate about a postponement, cancellation, or any combination of those possibilities.
Bach told the Japanese: “I’m not ready to add fuel to the flames of speculation there in any way.” Others are.
An Irish bookmaker last week began taking bets: 4/6 the opening ceremony will not go ahead in Tokyo as scheduled, or 11/10 that it will.
Senior IOC member Dick Pound last week suggested Tokyo and the IOC had roughly until the end of May to announce a decision. Pound, a former International Olympic Committee vice president, said there’s no decision so far and stressed talks were nearly constant with the World
Health Organization.
He has characterized the virus as the “elephant” in the room, likening the fight against it to “the new war.”
“You just don’t postpone something on the size and scale of the Olympics,” Pound told the Associated Press. “There are so many moving parts; so many countries, so many different seasons and competitive seasons, television seasons. You can’t say: ‘We’ll do it in October.’ It’s a big, big, big decision and you just can’t take it until you have all the reliable facts on which to base it.”
The virus has caused more than 3,000 deaths, the vast majority in China. Japan has reported 12 deaths with almost 1,000 cases.
Q: What’s the next thing to watch?
A: Tokyo 2020 CEO Toshiro Muto is holding a teleconference on Wednesday with the IOC executive board in Switzerland. The 14-member board along with Bach made the big decisions.
There could be changes to the torch relay, which is set to open March 26 in Fukushima prefecture, northeast of Tokyo. The event is heavily sponsored by Coca-Cola and Toyota. It might face crowd limits the way Sunday’s Tokyo Marathon did. Preseason baseball games are being played in empty stadiums, soccer’s J-League has suspended play, and a large Sumo event will be held without fans. Training for Tokyo’s 80,000 unpaid volunteers has been postponed until at least May.
Q: What’s up with the test events?
A: There are 18 remaining test events. Many are small and involve only Japanese athletes, a chance for organizers to test venues and logistics. Two in the next several weeks are planned to have non-Japanese attending: Paralympic wheelchair rugby on March 12-15, and a gymnastics meet on April 4-6. They’ll be watched to see if non-Japanese athletes compete.
Crowd restrictions could be put in place, although many don’t call for fans in the first place.
Q: What about qualifiers? A: Officials announced on Monday that an Olympic baseball qualifying event was postponed from April to June. It will be held in Taiwan as scheduled, but on June 17-21 instead of April 1-5. The World Baseball Softball Conference said it was because of “player, personnel and spectator health and safety measures against the spread of the coronavirus.”
Olympic qualifiers have been moved from China. Bach said that many Chinese teams and athletes are out of China and training elsewhere: the table tennis team is in Qatar, the women’s basketball team is in Croatia, and wrestlers are in Serbia.
“We have managed to move qualification competitions and tournaments within weeks from China to other countries where the safety of the athletes could be ensured,” Bach said.