Qualified athletes OK for Games
Aussie Olympic chiefs says delay won’t affect position
OLYMPICS: Australian Olympic Committee chief executive Matt Carroll says athletes already selected for Tokyo 2020 won’t have to re-qualify for the postponed Games.
A total of 43 athletes have been formally selected, with others already meeting qualifying criteria, for the Olympics, which have been postponed until next year amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Asked if the qualified athletes were guaranteed a place on the Australian team come 2021, Carroll said: “That is our understanding at this time.”
Questioned about what would happen if an individual over the next 12 months performed better in an event than someone who had already qualified Carroll said: “You’ve got to remember the way you get to an
Olympic Games is through specific qualifications.
“The events that have been held for these qualifications are done.”
Carroll said the AOC welcomed the decision of the International Olympic Committee, the Japanese government and Olympic organisers to move the Games back a year.
“It’s a challenging moment in history, tragic times globally, but athletes in sports now have absolute clarity that enables them to focus on a Games in 2021,” Carroll said.
“The AOC recognises the Games organisers have an enormous task ahead of them and there’s no doubt Japan will put on the greatest Olympic Games ever and provide an opportunity for the world to reconnect in a spirit of unity and hope.”
While some sports have flagged their intention to ask the federal government for financial support because of postponements forced by the coronavirus pandemic, Carroll said the AOC wouldn’t be following suit despite now having a longer lead-up to the Games.
“The Australian Olympic Committee takes no government funding, we don’t look for it or take it,” he said.
“So we will work with our partners, we will roll our sponsors over for another year. They are are standing by us which is great, so the Australian Olympic Committee will adjust how we manage our budgets to ensure that we still send the Australian Olympic team to the Games best prepared and ready to do their job.”
He said it was still intended to send Australia’s largest ever team to an offshore Olympics, possibly close to 500.
The Tokyo Games, slated for 11,000 athletes from more than 200 countries and at a reported cost of $A47billion, had been scheduled to start on July 24. They will still be called the 2020 Olympics – a symbolic gesture that IOC chief Thomas Bach hopes will allow the games to “stand as a beacon of hope.”
“This Olympic flame will be the light at the end of this tunnel,” Bach said.
Only World War I and World War II have forced the Olympics to be cancelled; in 1916, 1940 and 1944.
Now, a microscopic virus that is wreaking havoc with daily life around the planet has accomplished what no other virus (Zika in 2016), act of terrorism (the killing of Israelis in Munich in 1972), boycott (1980 and 1984) , threat of war (frequent) or even actual world war has managed to do: postpone the games and push them into an odd-numbered year.