Tag: olympics postponed

Sport in the Age of the Coronavirus

Far from breaking social barriers, the COVID-19 crisis actually reinforces them as elite sports coronate high achievers from India’s despairing hinterland.

In Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, as plague claims half of Europe, a knight challenges Death to a game of chess to save himself and his friends. What follows is a celebration of the precious human life embodied in all of us.

In these perilous times, little plagues have lodged in our minds. Fear feeds on a dodgy social media. Millions of the poor are quarantined in neediness. From ringing bells to tapping pans, lighting candles to clapping hands, watching the Ramayana to setting up virtual conversations with loved ones, we need to calm our nerves.

What are the white knights of world sport doing? Pore through the Internet, switch on the television and enjoy retro sports and replays. Even chess, the most contemplative of sports, has gone virtual. Saina Nehwal’s last hurrah in the Olympics is doubtful. Hockey player Gurjit Kaur calls the crisis a blessing in disguise. Really?

We see little Olympic sports where India has had success: hockey, shooting, boxing, wrestling, and weight lifting. So, fasten on to Star Sports’ rewind of Pakistan’s 0-7 World Cup defeats to India. Watching our pantomime warriors, we might be forgiven for thinking of the real ones, conducting raids across frontiers and aerial strikes against a sneaky enemy.

Television is orphaned of live sport. We get insomniac watching our beloved stars underperform in legacy tournaments. Who cares about the real stars – health workers, law enforcement officials, ordinary citizens – who are proving yet again that India works better in a crisis than in normal times?

Questions are swirling around in sport. Will athletes accept voluntary pay cuts? Will the ICC be chastened by nature’s revenge on its pleasure alleys? Will sports figures speak up about our abuse of Mother Nature? Doubtful.

Diminished Britain sulks at loss of cricketing privilege, so Michael Atherton called the IPL disruptive. But human greed is inexhaustible. As India took charge, England and Australia scrambled to late fence- mending to stay in the game.

Why would anybody want the IPL to lose its allure? Why would the BCCI start a real conversation with a world in lockdown? Global climbers do not step down voluntarily. But what will BCCI do with its wealth? We hear little about philanthropic instincts.

A policeman walks past a logo of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) during a governing council meeting of the Indian Premier League (IPL) at BCCI headquarters in Mumbai April 26, 2010. Credit: Arko Datta/Reuters/Files

Elsewhere, things may be better. The Players Association announced England’s centrally-contracted male cricketers will donate $613,000 to the England Cricket Board and charities. The women’s team has taken a three months’ voluntary pay cut. Teams in football’s Premier League will provide an advance of $153 million to the Football League and National League sides.

The crisis has knocked the life out of sport. Wimbledon has been cancelled, a first since World War II. Scores of tournaments – the World Athletics Indoor Championship; the Olympic boxing qualifiers; field hockey leagues in England, the Netherlands, Germany and Spain; the hockey Pro League; the Azlan Shah Cup; the Hockey Women’s Asian Champions Trophy and football’s Asian Champions League – have been abandoned or postponed.

Postponement of the Tokyo Olympics could impact between 0.5-0.8% of Japan’s GDP, according to the research firm Fitch. Postponement of Euro 2020 will cost Euros 250-300 million.

With events gone or deferred, we are back to training. For some time we heard brave, morale-boosting words from athletes about remaining fit. No more. Sportspersons struggle to make the virtual look real: doing routines like robots doing theirs in a quarantined piece of real estate on a celestial body.

In fairness, we can’t blame athletes for lacking motivation to push hard. How can we train at home, without the trainer and support team? Starved of games (no team likes the long tour Down Under), Australian hockey has turned its drills into art, winning everything. Alas, India lacks the tacticians who might replicate such routines.

The one tactician available is the state. A crisis is the state’s moment. It is the lifeline for both sages and self-servers. We are expected to exercise voluntary restraint on excesses. The state is watching.

Abhinav Bindra titled a chapter of his autobiography “Mr. Indian Official, Thanks for Nothing”. Lately, sport in India has had forward movement because the state has loosened controls. Are we back to the age of meddlesome governments?

Elite athletes in India now get paid. Stars can fall by the wayside, paralyzed by the lockdown. But in Indian sport, athletes don’t pay to play. Sport is a means to land a job in the government. Welfare is fashionable. If there were pay cuts, how would sportspersons respond?

Athletes can be immersed in their day jobs, from home. But since they are primarily players, how will they maintain motivation and morale in the uncertainty of the calendar?

This has raised issues of mental health. The postponement of the Olympics is “a step too far,” says retired British Olympic rowing gold medallist Tom Ransley. Losing nerve, elite badminton players have criticized the BWF for putting players’ lives at risk by going ahead with the All England Championships, drawing a sharp rejoinder.

So, it is doubtful that bonding in sport will deepen. How many of us have offered comfort to sportspersons who may be in depression, thinking about the wasted years of training? Far from breaking social barriers, the crisis actually reinforces them. Elite sports coronate high achievers from India’s despairing hinterland, giving them a social lifeline. Yet, we just don’t talk to athletes in India, it is not us. The rich simply sit on their perch.

We need earnest reasoning to heal our way out of the crisis. This means going back to the basics: the schoolboy joy of a 100-metre run, or Usain Bolt’s trademark celebration after winning Olympic gold.

Jitendra Nath Misra is a former ambassador and, until recently, was the advisor to the government of Odisha on sports.

Postponing The Olympics May Not be As Bad an Idea As We Think

Sporting events have been cancelled or postponed around the world, making qualifying for the Olympics difficult for nearly half of all athletes expected to take part.

At the 125th IOC Session in Buenos Aires in 2013, Tokyo won the right to host the Summer Olympics in 2020. The city was to join Athens, London, Paris and Los Angeles in the small group that has hosted a summer Olympics more than once.

Tokyo will now have to wait for most likely a year to join this exclusive club, however, after finally giving in to international pressure and deciding to postpone the games due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The pressure had been building over the past few days, led by Canada and Australia, both of which said they would not send athletes to Tokyo this year.

Stakeholders in the US, including the governing bodies of gymnastics, track and field, and swimming, also called for the games to be postponed. Their messages carried extra weight as the three events are key anchors of the Olympics and of special importance to broadcasters in the US.

The ever-tightening travel restrictions of the past week also made it evident that even if the games were to go ahead this year, they would do so in the absence of key members of the Olympic family. This could have included athletes from the five countries – Greece, Australia, Britain, France, and Switzerland – that have participated in every modern Summer Olympics.

There were other complications, as well. Sporting events have been cancelled or postponed around the world, making qualifying for the Olympics difficult for nearly half of all athletes expected to take part.

It was also becoming impossible to continue anti-doping testing to any meaningful degree.

Hungarian race walker Mate Helebrandt training at home in self-isolation. Photo: Attila Balazs/EPA/The Conversation

Only concerned about the bottom line

The IOC has been sharply criticised for its recalcitrance in not postponing the games sooner. Some have suggested its brand has suffered as a result.

There is no doubt that holding the Olympic flame ceremony in Greece and continuing with the torch relay was tactless at a time when fatality rates from the coronavirus were spiking in Europe and governments around the world were urging their citizens not to travel and stay away from public events.

The IOC’s decision to continue with these ceremonies and its dilatory and dithering response to the pandemic, in general, left it open to criticism that it cared only about the impact a postponement might have on its revenues.

Also read: Coronavirus: Olympics Postponed For the First Time in 124-Year History

It must be remembered that, although the IOC is an immensely rich and influential entity, it has in effect only one asset – the Olympic Games – to commercially exploit. And these come around only every two years.

But we can only speculate as to the role money played in the IOC’s reluctance to postpone the games.

To be fair to the IOC, it has said consistently that any decision on Tokyo 2020 would be guided by the health and welfare of the athletes and spectators, and based on the advice of recognised authorities such as the WHO.

The challenge of cancelling or moving the games

The logistics of reorganising an Olympics involving 11,000 athletes and thousands of support personnel and spectators will certainly be a significant undertaking. But this stands in stark contrast to the exponentially bleak figures of the toll of the virus – 12,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus on February 1, 87,000 on March 1 and now over 335,000 worldwide.

While the Olympics have been postponed, cancelled and moved in the past, this has been mainly due to the outbreak of war. (Tokyo was, for example, supposed to host the 1940 Games before they were cancelled due to the second world war.)

Indeed, the current host city contract specifically states in clause 66 that if the host country is in a state of war or civil disobedience, the IOC can at its sole discretion terminate the contract.

Natural disasters have affected the games in the past. The 1908 Olympics, originally to be held in Rome, had to be moved to London when Mount Vesuvius erupted and the Italian government was forced to divert money to projects such as the rebuilding of Naples and not the construction of Olympic venues.

Visitors wearing protective face masks following an outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) are seen through the Olympic rings in front of the Japan Olympics Museum, a day after the announcement of the games’ postponement to 2021, in Tokyo, Japan March 25, 2020. Photo: Reuters/Naoki Ogura

It is unlikely the IOC will seek to move this year’s Tokyo Games to another city. Logistically, it would be very difficult for any country to host the games on such short notice, especially given the massive investment in physical infrastructure required at a time when the world is pumping billions into stimulus packages for their economies.

It is also not in Japan’s interest to see the games moved. Under the host city contract, the failure to host the games is one of the specific contingencies that allow the IOC to unilaterally terminate the contract without affecting its rights to claim compensation against the Tokyo organising committee.

In addition, in cases when the IOC does unilaterally terminate the contract, the organising committee agrees to waive its right to receive any form of compensation from the IOC.

Further, the organisers (effectively, Japanese taxpayers) also agree to “indemnify and hold harmless” the IOC from any third party claims in respect of the IOC’s withdrawal from the games, such as those from broadcasters.

Then there’s the small fact that Japan has already invested A$20billion in the games.

Moving the games to later in 2020 is likely not an option given the accelerating nature, for now, of the coronavirus. Hosting the games in September or October would also wreak havoc with the scheduling of both athletes and broadcasters (although the 1964 Tokyo Olympics were held in mid-October).

As we saw from the Rugby World Cup held in Japan last year, moving into autumn also coincides with the typhoon season. And the Olympics would have to contend with the football seasons in Europe and the US at that time of year.

This leaves organisers with one decent option – delaying for a full year until the summer of 2021.

Why legal claims are unlikely

Apart from the logistical challenges of postponing the games, there are significant commercial considerations related to ticketing, broadcasting, and sponsors. In simple terms, those holding tickets, those with the rights to broadcast the Olympics and those with exclusive “official” sponsorships may now attempt to seek their money back in full or in part.

The Tokyo organisers and the IOC might argue that so-called force majeure clauses apply and that the contractual commitments given to sponsors and broadcasters have been disrupted by an unforeseen, natural cause.

There are already reports the Tokyo 2020 ticketing policy says organisers would not be held responsible if the Olympics are cancelled due to a number of “force majeure” incidents, including natural disasters, war and “states of emergency connected to public health.”

While sports lawyers try to interpret these contractual clauses over the next few weeks, we all need to remember the wider context here.

If any broadcaster or sponsor tries to engage in legal action at a time when the world is facing its most serious public health emergency in a century, this may not sit well with their viewers or customers. The commercial losses sustained by large corporate sponsors for an event that can be rescheduled will engender little public sympathy at the moment.

If the Olympics do go ahead in 2021, it can then be a global celebration of the talent, hard work, and resilience of the world’s leading athletes.

For now, the world needs to support the talent, hard work and resilience of the world’s leading health professionals. They truly have an Olympian task ahead.The Conversation

Jack Anderson is professor of sports law, Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Coronavirus: Olympics Postponed For the First Time in 124-Year History

The Tokyo Olympics were postponed on Tuesday into 2021.

Tokyo/Athens: The Tokyo Olympics were postponed on Tuesday into 2021, the first such delay in the Games’ 124-year modern history, as the coronavirus crisis wrecked the last international sporting showpiece still standing this year.

Though a huge blow to Japan, which invested $12 billion in the run-up, the decision was a relief to thousands of athletes fretting over how to train as the world headed into lockdown over the disease that has claimed more than 16,500 lives.

Pressure had been building on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and its powerful president Thomas Bach, with some athletes and sporting bodies critical of the time taken to make an inevitable decision.

After a call with Bach, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the July 24-August 9 competition would be rescheduled for the summer of 2021 at the latest as proof of victory over the virus.

“We asked President Bach to consider postponement of about one year to make it possible for athletes to play in the best condition,” Abe said.

“President Bach said he is in agreement 100 percent.”

The IOC confirmed that.

Though it was the first Olympics’ postponement, they were cancelled outright several times during the two 20th century World Wars. Major Cold War boycotts also disrupted the Moscow and Los Angeles Games in 1980 and 1984.


Athletes sad but relief

Athletes were disappointed but broadly endorsed the delay, given health risks and disruption to their training as gyms, stadia and swimming pools shut down around the world.

“I compete in a little bike race, which is nothing compared to what is going on in the world right now,” American Olympic BMX champion Connor Fields said, before the official announcement. “No sport is more important if it means more people might potentially die from this.”

Also read: Hubei Relaxes Restrictions as China’s new Coronavirus Infections Double

Australia’s two-time Olympic champion swimmer, Cate Campbell, said she was reeling but ready for the new challenge.

“The goal posts haven’t disappeared – just shifted,” she said, after her nation had announced it would not go to Tokyo 2020 if it went ahead.

US skateboarder and gold medal hopeful Nyjah Huston was frustrated, though, especially given his sport was scheduled to make its debut at the Tokyo.

“When skating finally makes it in the Olympics then it gets postponed,” the 25-year-old wrote on Instagram, after a delay had begun to look inevitable. “I was feelin (sic) ready too … now I’m going to have to be a year older for this!”

The coronavirus outbreak has raged around the world since early this year, infecting nearly 380,000 people and wrecking sports events from the soccer Euros to Formula One.

Despite their disappointment, not to mention the logistical headaches and financial losses coming, a poll showed about 70% of Japanese agreed with a delay.

Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike told reporters the delayed Games would still be branded “Tokyo 2020”.

Jumper with no sandpit

In a crowded sporting calendar, which will be making up for this year’s cancellations, World Athletics said it would be willing to move the 2021 world championships, scheduled for August 6-15 in Oregon to clear a path for the Olympics.

Also read: What Can Previous Lockdown Strategies Tell us About Ending the Rise of COVID-19?

The Athletics Association said a survey of more than 4,000 track and field competitors showed 78% wanted the Games delayed.

The association’s American founder, twice Olympic triple jump champion Christian Taylor, is among athletes unable to train due to social distancing and closure of facilities.

“There is no sandpit for me, I have not put on jump spikes for two weeks,” he told Britain’s Times newspaper.

Tuesday’s decision came 122 days before the planned opening ceremony at Japan’s newly built National Stadium, which was to usher in the 16-day carnival of sport featuring 11,000 athletes from 206 nations and territories.

It was not the first time a Japanese Olympics has run into problems. Both the 1940 Summer and Winter Olympic Games were due to be held in Japan but were cancelled due to World War Two.

It was not yet clear whether the 57% of athletes who had already secured spots in Tokyo would need to qualify again for the re-arranged Olympics.

The torch relay was being cancelled.