Olympics Games had no choice but to wait
I've still got the binder to prove it. As a kid, I once mapped out my own personal Olympic Games.
Seriously, it took months to assemble. I went sport by sport, created a full schedule of events using names of actual competitors and teams and then finally simulated all of it – either through video games or my own imagination – for two summer weeks. The ultimate sports nerd-out, for sure.
There are VHS tapes somewhere that I made from 1988 Olympics in Calgary and Seoul. When NBC did the widely ridiculed Olympics Triplecast for Barcelona in 1992, I bought it and loved it, going so far as to mail a letter to the network so it knew at least one viewer appreciated the effort.
When the Olympics actually made it to nearby Atlanta in 1996, I was a high-schooler with a little money and a few holidays and birthdays to spend. Two years of presents turned into two weeks of tickets, usually with three events packed into each day. I was exhausted when it ended, but it was worth it. I wanted to see as many different sports as I could.
As I've gotten older and jumped into covering sports for my career, digital streaming has allowed the wonderful opportunity to watch any sport at any time in recent Olympics. That's the stuff of vacation time from work.
The Olympics is my thing – more than any other sporting event or any other event, period.
And I agree that we can't hold them this summer in Tokyo.
Breaking news Monday from USA TODAY'S Christine Brennan, who was told by an International Olympic Committee member that the 2020 Olympics would be postponed, probably until 2021, was disappointing but not all that surprising.
The IOC, in fact, had held out longer than you might have thought, considering how the COVID-19 pandemic is sweeping the globe and wiping out events of all kinds in so many places.
The Olympics is the biggest sports domino to fall and one of historic significance.
Putting this crisis in perspective, only two things have caused the modern Olympics to not proceed as scheduled – World War I and World War II.
The Olympics were canceled in those cases, though. Postponement is a step short of that, thankfully, and a necessary one. It has simply become obvious that the Olympics – like so many other beloved sporting events on the calendar – could not take place as scheduled in 2020.
Even if the venues were safe and Japan had contained the virus enough to be able to host full-scale events, it would have been difficult and unfair for so many athletes in so many countries to go through with this now. They would have to put themselves at risk in order to continue training regimens to
try to be ready. And even then, they wouldn't be as ready as they should be, given the lack of various preliminary competitions. It would be like going directly from spring training to the World Series.
This needed to happen. A postponement will be difficult for many logistical reasons, but the Olympics are about togetherness. That's an unrealistic goal in a time of social distancing, with survival for so many dependent on staying apart.
The Olympics are too important to not do them the right way.
Sadly, the world can wait.
And I can, too.
Reach Gentry Estes at gestes@tennessean.com and on Twitter @Gentry_estes.