Rules that prevent family from attending Tokyo Games tough on Canadian athletes
Damian Warner has always been able to pick his family out of the crowd at pivotal moments in his Olympic career. At the Tokyo Games, however, Warner’s family won’t be there.
The Canadian decathlete remembers walking into the 60,000-seat Olympic Stadium at the London Games in 2012 and immediately finding his mom and dad in the crowd. Four years later, he recalls scanning the crowd at the Rio Olympics and seeing his coaches, mom, sister and longtime partner, Jen Cotten.
The Japanese government declared a state of emergency because of the COVID-19 pandemic July 12, preventing any spectators from watching events at the Games in person. Even before that decree, Olympic teams from visiting nations weren’t allowed to have family travel with them and fans from other countries were barred from entering Japan.
Those overlapping rules have ensured no Canadian athlete — or any other competitor from a visiting nation, for that matter — will have family in the stands.
“Even though they’re not going to be in the stadium, I know that they’re going to be with me,” said Warner, who became a father in March with the birth of son Theo. “They’re going to be up at whatever hour they’ll need to be able to watch the 100 or the 400 or anything like that. But it’ll be different for sure.”
Warner isn’t the only Canadian Olympian who will be missing their families in Tokyo.
Beach volleyball player Melissa Humana-Paredes said a dozen of her relatives had planned to come to Japan to watch her compete before COVID-19 restrictions prevented them. Her father, Hernan Humana, was a volleyball player for Chile who later coached Canada’s men’s beach team, and so her participation in the Games was something of a rite of passage in her family. “It’s my first Olympics and I know they wanted to experience it with me, especially with the Olympic tradition that’s already there in my family,” she said. “I think it would have been really special. It is a bummer. I think we all saw it coming though.”
Sailor Sarah Douglas said her brothers and a friend were so confident she would represent Canada at the Olympics they had purchased tickets and made travel arrangements before she had even qualified.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic postponed the Tokyo Games by a year and ongoing restrictions kept them away.
Women’s basketball player Kia Nurse joked playing in the WNBA bubble helped her prepare for playing without family or spectators in Tokyo, but she feels for some of her teammates. “These are going to be their last Olympics, and you want your family and your friends to be there. But I think we have a really great group of girls who are going to continue to bring their energy with one another, continue to have that family atmosphere, because we’re chasing something really, really special.”
The International Olympic Committee expanded its restrictions June 30 to allow athletes who are breastfeeding to bring their children to Tokyo.
That was after Nurse’s teammate Kim Gaucher had fought back against the Olympics’ nofamily rule, which would have prevented her from breastfeeding her three-month-old daughter.