San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Growing calls to push back Tokyo Olympics
Stranded on dry land, Adrian sees IOC’s indecision as irresponsible
As a threetime Olympian, Nathan Adrian knows exactly what he’s supposed to be doing right now. Crushing it in the pool and getting ready to peak for the Olympic trials in June. Instead, he’s stranded on dry land.
“It’s such a weird feeling,” the former Cal swimmer said in a phone interview with The Chronicle on Saturday morning. “I’m so used to a routine, to a fouryear schedule. This is crunch time, but the whole world has come to a halt.”
Thousands of hopeful Olympians around the globe have had their training halted as the world tries to stop the spread of the deadly coronavirus. They’re waiting for some direction from the International Olympic Committee. Yet they’re not getting any.
On Friday, USA Swimming, the governing body for Adrian’s sport, called for the postponement of the Tokyo Olympics by one year.
“There are no perfect answers, and this will not be easy,” USA Swimming CEO Tim Hinchey wrote in an open letter to U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee leadership. “However, it is a solution that provides a concrete path forward and allows all athletes to prepare for a safe and successful Olympic Games in 2021.
“We urge the USOPC, as a leader within the Olympic Movement, to use its voice and speak up for the athletes.”
USA Track and Field sent a similar plea, posted on Twitter on Saturday morning.
“I appreciate it,” Adrian said. “Someone had to say something . ... These are the questions the IOC isn’t addressing. There needs to be transparency.”
At 31, and a survivor of testicular cancer, Adrian isn’t crazy about postponing the Olympics.
“I’ll be a year older and all those young swimmers will have another year of training under their belts,” he said. “I have my hands full trying to make it as it is.”
But he believes it is probably the right thing to do.
“If they don’t (postpone), the IOC needs to show a very, very clear path as to how the decision will be made, what data will be used,” he said. “All
they’re saying now is, ‘We’ll take all precautions into consideration and let you know.’ ”
Adrian cited a recent conference call with the IOC and athlete representatives that seems to have caused more confusion. The takeaway from the call was that athletes need to try to keep training.
Adrian thinks that’s irresponsible. Olympians’ nature is to try to go as hard as they can.
“Higher, faster, stronger — do whatever it takes to be the best,” he said. “That means pushing our bodies. How is an Olympic wrestler with goldmedal aspirations not going to touch somebody? It’s irresponsible to have those competing ideals in our heads at the same time.”
Adrian, a fivetime gold medalist, was diagnosed with testicular cancer in January of last year. He had two surgeries, got back in the pool and won gold at the 2019 World Championships in July, anchoring the 4x100 freestyle relay team.
He thinks his training has been going well. He competed in Iowa this month and then headed to the Olympic training center in Colorado Springs. Confusion quickly set in. At first, athletes thought the facilities would be the perfect place to hunker down and train. Then, swimmers could train only in limited numbers: 10 in an Olympicsized pool. Then, the Colorado governor closed down the training center completely. Adrian returned to the Bay Area and is navigating life while sheltering in place along with the rest of California.
“We’ve just been day to day, moment to moment,” said Adrian, who works with Cal head coach Dave Durden, the coach of the U.S. Olympic Team. “We’ve tried to get pool space but that seems to be shut down now. I’ll probably do a dryland workout today.”
But it won’t be long before all the training benefits start slipping away. As they already are for athletes in other parts of the world. “Would a gold medal even mean the same in these Olympics?” Adrian
said. “It would just mean that person was able to train. The Olympic charter talks about promoting fair play and fighting discrimination. But how do you do that if only people with means and connections are able to train?”
A public health major at Cal, who also recently went through a health crisis of his own, Adrian said it would take major data and explanation to convince him that the Olympics could be run safely in a few months.
“Would you test each and every single athlete before and after the Games?” he wondered. “And then if even one tests positive, quarantine the entire group of Olympic athletes? You are living in very close quarters with a lot of people.”
Adrian has been using his Olympic platform to talk about his bout with cancer and the importance of getting testing. Olympic athletes are powerful spokespeople for matters of health and safety.
If only the same could be said about the committee members who governs them.