IPL mess should be nail in Olympics coffin

The Indian Premier League did not survive the ravages of the pandemic. The Tokyo Olympics may – but it shouldn’t.

As the countdown clock ticks rapidly towards Tokyo in July, the justification, the reasoning and the logic for holding the postponed Games hasn’t brightened as many predicted. Rather, it’s got worse – to the extent where a plea from a top New Zealand epidemiologist calling on the Government to take a ‘‘moral stance’’ against the event feels like a battling beacon of sanity.

The world’s best Twenty20 cricketers were isolated in luxury hotels and when they had to abandon their safe havens for games throughout the Covidriddled country, they donned full PPE gear on chartered flights.

They were assured by the game’s governing bosses in India that they were ‘‘totally safe within the bubble’’. That almost immediately popped.

Yet somehow we’re meant to accept that the accommodation and prevention plans for the 15,000 international Olympic and Paralympic athletes from more than 200 countries expected to compete in Tokyo will keep them – and the Japanese public – safe.

The argument that ‘‘Japan is not India’’ in regard to the pandemic does not put up a spirited fight.

Early this week, the Olympics host nation hit an all-time high for the second straight day of Covid-19 patients with severe symptoms, heightening fears of the building strain on health care systems in a country of 126 million people, of whom less than two per cent have received at least one vaccination dose – the lowest rate among OECD countries.

Yet that didn’t stop World Athletics president Sebastian Coe saying he believes the Games will go ahead safely after attending a half-marathon test event in

Sapporo this week.

‘‘I don’t believe any Olympic Games has been delivered under more difficult circumstances. These Games have an overlay of complexity that is beyond most comprehension,’’ Coe said.

A second ‘playbook’ outlining some of those complexities was released at the start of the month, saying all athletes will be tested for Covid-19 daily – a change to the initial plans of testing athletes at least once every four days, which is a clear announcement that concerns over the pandemic have grown, not lessened.

Yet the IPL seemed to show no matter how many stringent precautions are put in place, the Games and its competitors are at the mercy of a dangerous combination of the foibles of human nature and crowded environments.

It seems inevitable that the Olympics will be struck by the virus, with the only doubt being how deeply it will affect competition.

Yet there are billions of dollars of reasons why the Games – postponed last year – won’t be cancelled. Tokyo’s spend to host the sporting extravaganza is NZ$20 billion at a bare minimum, and the International Olympic Committee receives almost three-quarters of its income from the broadcast rights.

Yet Japan’s citizens have voiced through a series polls that they do not want the Games – without overseas fans, and possibly no spectators at all – to take place.

There is sympathy for the athletes, many of whom have trained for a decade or more to compete at the pinnacle event of their sport, that to deny them a chance to compete when they’re keen to do so, would be churlish.

But some of that understanding dropped when athletes received vaccinations ahead of the vulnerable – the elderly, people with serious medical conditions – simply because they are choosing to put themselves in a situation with an element of risk.