USA TODAY International Edition
What the Olympics would’ve looked like
The Tokyo Games were supposed to start Friday. Columnist Christine Brennan says what was unthinkable may come to pass in 2021.
“No way at all. You can see what’s going on now in your country and in Brazil, some of these other countries, where the wave is still arriving. It just couldn’t happen.” Dick Pound
Longest serving IOC member on whether the Tokyo Games could have been held this month
What a week this was going to be in the sports world. In an alternate universe, thousands would already be gathering in Tokyo in anticipation of Friday’s opening ceremony of the 2020 Summer Olympic Games. The airports around Tokyo would be bustling, the streets packed, the air filled with anticipation. People from around the globe would be coming together to celebrate the largest regularly scheduled peacetime gathering of the world.
Never mind. On March 24, under tremendous pressure from national Olympic committees and international sports federations in the midst of the global pandemic, the International Olympic Committee postponed the 2020 Games until 2021, fingers crossed. It was the first postponement in the history of the Olympic movement.
The IOC was forced to listen to the voices of the world’s athletes, who were quarantined in their homes and apartments, unable to train or even safely go outside. How in the world were they going to prepare for an Olympic Games that then were four months away?
For a time, IOC President Thomas Bach was reticent to pull the plug on the 2020 schedule. There was talk of what the world might look like if we were past the coronavirus by July 2020. How ridiculous does that sound now?
“What was really surprising I guess was that it took that long to come to the conclusion that it was a non- starter,” Dick Pound, the longest serving IOC member, said in a recent phone interview from his home in Montreal. “The curve hadn’t really started to head north in a lot of countries. It was serious and clearly spreading but the numbers were nowhere near what they were to become. I don’t think as many people as should have understood what a real pandemic is like.”
Still, as the calendar turns to the week the Games would have begun, it’s natural to think about what might have been – except that the reality of what actually is happening is so stark and foreboding, it’s obviously an exercise in futility to really even consider it.
“No way at all,” Pound said. “You can see what’s going on now in your country and in Brazil, some of these other countries, where the wave is still arriving. It just couldn’t happen. I don’t think the public authorities would allow it to happen. Think about what that would look like: You’re going to quarantine entire Olympic teams for 14 days when they arrive in Japan, assuming they can get there? No. No way at all.”
What would have been unthinkable in 2020 just might come to pass in 2021, however. Adjustments will likely be necessary to hold the Games, so ideas that might have been used to save the 2020 Olympics might hold over to 2021, as the two are one and the same, inextricably linked. For instance, a quarantine bubble
of some sort, which would have been a must for the 2020 Olympics, might still be essential for 2021.
Dr. Dermot Phelan, director of Sports Cardiology at Atrium Health in Charlotte, North Carolina, said that all sports probably will be changed for the foreseeable future, including the Olympics in 2021, if they occur. “My own view is that they probably will be able to do it, but I think it will look very different compared to any other Olympics, with COVID changing our lives day to day,” he said.
Asked what an Olympic bubble might look like, he said it might even be a moving bubble, with athletes from the same sport living, practicing, competing and moving around Tokyo together. “I think that’s exactly how it’s going to work,” he said. “The challenge is that while you can do it for, say, USA swimmers, can you do it for some of these underdeveloped countries? That’s where it gets more difficult, but every effort will be made to make it happen.”
Testing for the virus would have been as essential in 2020 as it will be in 2021. The Games might end up going on without spectators, just as they would have had there been an attempt to stage them in 2020. While this would be devastating to Tokyo organizers and fans, for most of the world, the Olympics are a TV show anyway.
IOC vice president Anita DeFrantz, a U. S. bronze medal- winning rower in 1976 who missed the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow due to the U. S.- led boycott of those Games, said the question is not what might have been in 2020, but what could be in 2021.
“We worked hard to try to save the Games for 2020,” she said. “Now, it’s all about putting on the Games safely in 2021. It’s about the Olympic Games surviving. They will survive.”