Keep the Olympic flame lit, but for now just put it on the back burner
A pedestrian wearing a mask walks past the emblem of the Tokyo Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan, on March 23, 2020. Credit: EPA-EFE/Shutterstock/Kimimasa Mayama
The 2020 Olympic Games are over, of course.
Everyone knows that except the IOC itself, which still has not made an official announcement even though influential member Dick Pound told USA Today on Monday that things soon will be officially kaput.
The pressure to postpone ramped up late Sunday after the IOC said it is considering a delay and will decide within a month, prompting Canada and Australia to announce they will not go to Japan regardless.
Pound, a Canadian and the IOC’s longest-serving member, then said all that is left to figure out is the details.
Let’s not be too hard on the IOC here, though. Organizers knew postponing the Games until the following summer would be a financial and logistical nightmare and understandably had been hoping for a miracle.
IOC president Thomas Bach had been clinging to the postponement cliff by his fingernails, even as much of the athletic world stomped on his fingers.
“I know that this unprecedented situation leaves many of your questions open,” he wrote in a letter to athletes. “I also know that this rational approach may not be in line with the emotions many of you have to go through.”
But as the NBA, NHL, MLB, NCAA, Masters, etc., have learned, at some point rational and emotional align, and good policy and good citizenship trump lucrative business contracts.
What makes this even more complicated than the situation faced by pro leagues is that it is a global event in the context of a global problem.
Big-league baseball and many other North American sports institutions carried on through World War II and other societal disruptions. But the Olympics took pauses in 1916, 1940 and 1944 because there was no other choice.
There is not one this time, either, even though the circumstances are different. Humans are trying to keep one another alive during this pandemic, not kill them with military-grade weapons.
Anyway, all of the above is about health and money and politics and everything else that goes into events of this sort in times such as these. But this is a column by a sportswriter, so let’s distill the discussion into a simple one about sports.
Staging the Olympics as scheduled in late July and early August would have created an uneven playing field, and that was enough of an argument against proceeding.
For all of the talk among athletes about health concerns, for many it is evident that their primary concern is a competitive one, and that’s OK. It is how they are wired.
The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, and governments’ reactions to it, is wildly uneven around the world and likely will continue to be into midsummer.
In urging Bach to postpone the Games, World Athletics president Sebastian Coe called the July start date “neither feasible nor desirable” and cited competitive imbalance as athletes are limited in their ability to train — not to mention compete in Olympic qualifying events.
That is why even if the virus suddenly disappeared in, say, mid-June and the world became healthy overnight, there would be no way to hold a fair Olympics this summer because of missed workouts this spring.
It is not as simple as telling LeBron James and his friends to start working out on June 1 and then playing postseason games on June 15. Every nation of athletes has a different reality.
Even Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe appeared ready to give in on Monday, saying, “If it is difficult to hold [the Games] in a complete way, a decision of postponement would be unavoidable.”
Postponing until autumn is a non-starter, in part because of the disruption to the athletes’ well-honed yearly schedules, in part because of business concerns.
NBC presumably would want no part of an Olympics that competes with the NFL and college football for viewers.
“These are extraordinary and unprecedented times, and we fully support the IOC’s decision to step up its scenario-planning for the Tokyo Olympics.” an NBC spokesman said on Monday. “We are prepared to stand behind any decision made by the IOC, the Japanese government, and the world health officials with whom they are working regarding the Tokyo Olympics.”
So 2021 it shall be, once the IOC and Japan sort out who will pay the bills, including the ongoing maintenance of Olympic facilities and countless other financial ripple effects.
By all means, keep the flame lit. But put it on the back burner for now.
Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.
