IOC’S DITHERING IS UNFAIR ON ATHLETES, SAYS HEFFERNAN

ROB HEFFERNAN has slammed the International Olympic Committee for delaying their decision to postpone the Tokyo Games, branding the organising body’s dithering as ‘ridiculous’. The world champion race walker is coaching four athletes who are set to compete in Tokyo and insists if the Games had gone ahead this year, it would have been unfair to athletes and a danger to public health. ‘At an Olympic Games where most of the volunteers would be elderly, you’re risking lives,’ he said. ‘You’re also risking igniting this thing again. From a health point of view it’s scandalous.’ On Sunday the IOC said it was considering a number of options, including a delayed start or a stripped-back version of the Games that could begin as planned in four months. In a poll of 4,000 athletes run by The Athletics Association, 78 per cent said the Games should be postponed with 87 per cent saying the outbreak had affected their training. World Athletics president Sebastian Coe wrote to the IOC last weekend to say an Olympics in July 2020 was ‘neither feasible or desirable’ and that ‘we owe it to our athletes to give them respite where we can’. However as Peter Sherrard, CEO of the Olympic Federation of Ireland, admitted yesterday that the Games were ‘likely to be postponed’, news later filtered through that the Tokyo spectacular would be deferred. The Games were due to go ahead on July 24 but IOC member Dick Pound confirmed that they would be held at a later date, most likely 2021, with final arrangements to be ironed out in the coming weeks. Despite the disruption to training and racing schedules, Heffernan’s athletes had been preparing as if the Games were still on. He has four race walkers under his guidance: Irishmen Brendan Boyce and David Kenny along with South Africa’s Wayne Snyman and Britain’s Callum Wilkinson. Athletes had been left in limbo as the Games hung in the balance However, Olympic bronze medalist in 2012, said his charges had been working as hard as ever, with Boyce logging over 100 miles in training and Kenny close to the same volume. The World Race Walking Team Championships in May, a key preparation event, has already been cancelled, and in its place Heffernan plans to pace Boyce through a 50km effort that same weekend in early May by running two metres in front of him, passing the marathon distance (42.2km) in under 3:10. ‘Regardless of the Olympics being called off, normality will have to resume eventually and everyone will be looking for a race in September, October, November, so we’ll aim for a race then,’ said Heffernan, who urged his athletes to use this time to strengthen all areas of their performance. ‘We still need to improve on technique, strength endurance, speed. We have to put the training blocks in so we don’t detrain. Hopefully things will be back up and running by the summer.’