Image: screenshot/Wikimedia Commons
The International Olympic Committee has been taking some heat in the midst of the COVID-19 fallout. While several professional sports leagues, music festivals, concert tours, and pretty much any large gatherings of human beings have announced indefinite pauses over the past two weeks in response to the pandemic, IOC officials and Tokyo Games organizers have been slow to decide on the fate of the 2020 Summer Games.
For some perspective, more than 11,000 athletes convened in Rio for the Games in 2016, according to the IOC, and more than seven million tickets were on sale for spectators coming in and out of Brazil. Living in a world now where most of the global population is asked to stay six feet away from each other at all times and never gather in groups larger than 10, it’s tough to imagine we’ll see several thousand people packed into any stadium or arena just four months from now.
As of this weekend, the IOC’s official stance was that they’d “step up scenario planning,” while several nations’ Olympic committee officials directly asked for postponements. By Monday, rather than wait any longer for the IOC to make up its mind, Canadian and Australian Olympic Committee officials announced they wouldn’t send athletes to Tokyo this summer — the first domino to fall with a firm decision.
“This is not solely about athlete health – it is about public health,” the Canadian Olympic Committee announced on Monday, asking for a postponement.
“It’s clear the Games can’t be held in July,” Australian chef de mission Ian Chesterman told athletes, asking them to prepare for a 2021 Olympics.
Then, finally, Veteran International Olympic Committee member Dick Pound told USA TODAY, “On the basis of the information the IOC has, postponement has been decided. The parameters going forward have not been determined, but the Games are not going to start on July 24, that much I know.”
The news from Pound doesn’t qualify as an official decision, however, because neither the IOC nor the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee had confirmed as of Monday afternoon. In fact, the IOC said in its Sunday statement it will take as much as the next four weeks to make its decision, outlining that it’s far more complicated than a few boardroom executives getting together to throw anonymous votes in a hat.
“It would need the full commitment and cooperation of the Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee and the Japanese authorities, and of all the International Federations (IFs) and National Olympic Committees (NOCs),” the statement read. “It would also require commitment from, and collaboration with, the Rights-Holding Broadcasters (RHBs) and our top partner sponsors, as part of their continued and valued support to the Olympic Movement, as well as cooperation from all the Games’ partners, suppliers and contractors. It is in this spirit of the Olympic stakeholders’ shared commitment to the Olympic Games, and in light of the worldwide deteriorating situation, that the IOC EB has today initiated the next step in the IOC’s scenario-planning.”
A scaled-down version of the Games is one possible outcome that’s been reported, but news of the postponement by several months to a year appears to be the most reliable.
“It will come in stages,” said Pound. “We will postpone this and begin to deal with all the ramifications of moving this, which are immense.”
