Turning up is the real test; do that and Australia’s Olympians are halfway there
In recent weeks, while navigating my own Olympic-related logistical difficulties, I often recalled the sentiment expressed by AusCycling performance director Simon Jones. Since the Tokyo 2020 Olympics were rescheduled last year, every time Jones and I spoke he would tell me: “Just turning up is the challenge.”
In a sporting discipline obsessed with marginal gains, where gold medals are won or lost by milliseconds, Jones’s mantra was striking. But it captured the immense task faced by those wanting to compete at the Covid Games. For athletes, coaches and journalists, turning up in Tokyo has been atesting exercise. The Olympics might not hand out participation medals, but every athlete who makes it to the start line will deserve an accolade.
Even for a lowly journalist, getting there has involved reams of paperwork, dual Covid-19 tests, hard-to-come-by flights and an appetite for the unknown. Australia’s athletes, meanwhile, have been jumping around the country trying to avoid lockdowns, keep training and get in some heat acclimatisation with the Games just days away.
For the Australian Olympians who have arrived in Japan, dodging Covid cases in the athlete’s village while also staying focused is the order of the day. One told me he planned to stay in his room at all costs, other than trips out to train. Being a close contact could end these Olympians’ medal dreams.
For athletes yet to depart Australian shores, logistical nightmares remain. In 2020 and early 2021, Australia held a competitive edge over many Olympic rivals. With large parts of the country Covid-free, training and domestic competition were largely unrestricted while much of the rest of the world was in lockdown. Suddenly, with Sydney, Victoria and South Australia all kept indoors, the shoe is on the other foot.
Jones’s track cycling squad are an apt case study. Having been based at the Anna Meares Velodrome in Brisbane in recent weeks, the team intended to fly to Sydney before heading outbound on one of the handful of international flights still leaving the country. Whereas the bulk of the Australian Olympic team left Cairns on a charter flight on Saturday, the cyclists are not permitted to enter Japan until five days before their events begin – in the second week of the Games.
But with Sydney in lockdown, the team’s ability to travel south – and then on to Tokyo – has been thrown into doubt. Add in the large baggage load that travels with a track cycling team, and the puzzle of moving riders, staff and bikes from Brisbane to the Izu Velodrome in Japan remains an as-yet-unresolved headache.
Little wonder then that Jones is still touting “turning up” as his biggest challenge. “This isn’t the time for [thinking about] medals,” he told AAP recently. “To be honest, if we turn up, we’ve got a chance.” Logistics may not be sexy, but if Australia win golds on the track in Tokyo, the Australian Olympic Committee’s operations team will be entitled to plaudits, too.
So after 16 months of uncertainty, here we are – ready or not, the Olympics have come. For all the off-field drama – and expect there to be plenty, with athletes all but certain to miss competition due to cases, and perhaps even go Awol in defiance of strict movement restrictions – the Games should deliver on the field. Australia has sent the largest travelling contingent in the nation’s Olympic history, and that increased squad size is likely to sound in an impressive medal haul.
In the pool, Australia’s young squad is in fine form and expected to avenge the disappointment of Rio 2016. In the athletics’ stadium, the strongest Australian delegation in decades will take to the start line with medals firmly within grasp. Jones’ cyclists have high hopes on the road, track, BMX and mountain bike. Ash Barty, fresh off her Wimbledon triumph, shapes up as the gold medal favourite in the tennis. And in the team sports, medals are on the table in basketball, hockey and rugby sevens.
With most of Australia in lockdown, it is tempting to ask whether any of this actually matters. Facing strict movement restrictions and the associated economic impact, Australians could be forgiven for feeling indifferent to the forthcoming festivity of sport. The International Olympic Committee’s contempt for the Japanese population, which overwhelmingly disapproves of the Tokyo Games going ahead, is also a stark warning for Brisbane – the city is due to be awarded the 2032 Olympics on Wednesday.
But the federal government does not spend a quarter of a billion dollars on high-performance sport each year for nothing. Surely we can acknowledge that, in the midst of a pandemic, there are more important things. We can acknowledge that the first Covid Games are not the smartest idea. We can acknowledge that the IOC is a dangerously unaccountable international sporting body, insisting that the Games go on for the sake of its own bank balance, without regard for the Japanese people or the thousands of athletes that are putting themselves in harm’s way.
We can acknowledge all that, and still look forward to the action beginning on Wednesday, when Australia’s softballers open the Games against Japan, and the opening ceremony which will follow on Friday. Ancient Roman poet Juvenal famously criticised his contemporaries, who had lost their civic aspirations and were left to hope for “just two things: bread and circuses”. In these dark times, the modern equivalent doesn’t sound too bad.
In these dark times, the modern equivalent of bread and circuses doesn’t sound too bad