Tokyo Games to be placed on a war footing as coronavirus worries grow

Retired hurdler Sally Pearson might be confident that the Tokyo Olympics will go ahead but athletes and spectators should prepare for battle stations, writes MIKE COLMAN.

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So Sally Pearson has declared that the Olympics will definitely be going ahead, “unless there’s a world war”.

Well thank goodness for that. It was looking a bit iffy there for a while but now that Sal says everything is okay I guess that’s official then.

Although – far be it from me to question the retired hurdler’s grasp on international medical, social and economic issues – what if, just on some off-chance, she doesn’t know what she’s talking about?

What’s going to happen then?

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The New National Stadium in Tokyo could be empty. Photo: AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

As someone who is lucky enough to have been to a few Olympic Games over the years I have to say I’m a little concerned.

I mean, they’ve already closed down most of China, all of Italy and half of Qantas so surely at some stage someone is going to look at what is planned to take place in Tokyo in a mere four and a bit months’ time and say, “are they serious?”

This is no school sports meet we’re talking about here. It’s seriously big. Thousands and thousands of people pouring in from all over the world, sneezing, coughing, rubbing shoulders, sharing buses and trains and bathrooms.

Stadiums all over the city are filled and emptied and filled again twice a day for 14 days straight. Someone gets up from their seat and someone else takes their place immediately. Hotel lobbies, restaurants and bars are an endless stream of humanity.

Commuters in Tokyo are trying to stay healthy. Photo: Charly Triballeau / AFP

The whole thing is a gigantic petri dish for germs. Matter of fact, thinking back on the seven Olympics and six Commonwealth Games that I’ve covered over the past 30 years there are only one or two at which I didn’t get sick to some degree.

It’s pretty much an occupational hazard. At the Delhi Commonwealth Games the hardest working member of our team was the medical officer running from room to room with the upset tummy treatment.

And that was just for a common or garden dose of Delhi belly, not a life-threatening virus that could bring entire continents to a standstill.

The closest thing I can recall was the threat of the Zika virus at the Rio Olympics four years ago.

South Korean athletes model long-sleeved training gear impregnated with mosquito repellent to protect them from the Zika virus during the Rio Olympics. Picture: AFP

Every day we headed out of our accommodation coated in some foul smelling insect repellent and dressed in long sleeved T-shirts. Some wore hats with netting hanging down. As it turned out we were in more danger of getting our laptops and cameras stolen than catching Zika but that’s not the point.

As one of my Rio colleagues said this week, “you had to get stung by a mozzie to catch that one. This Corona thing you can get off a door handle.”

It’s a fair point. So what are the Tokyo officials planning to do about it? Stop athletes from China, Italy and Iran from competing? What about banning spectators from those countries from attending, or anyone who has visited those countries, or been in contact with someone who has?

And that’s assuming that the virus remains isolated to those three countries for the next 20 weeks. What if it spreads?

The Yomiuri Giants and Yakult Swallows play in front of empty stands at Tokyo Dome. Picture: Eugene Hoshiko/AP

What if there is an outbreak in Japan during the Games? What happens to the thousands of visitors who will have to be held there in quarantine or risk taking the virus back to their own countries?

Maybe they’ll have to follow the lead of the Japanese baseball league and hold all the events in empty stadiums – which I must say doesn’t sound very Olympian – or, as some have suggested, postpone them.

Not sure that idea would work. Athletes follow a very strict training regimen to ensure they peak at just the right time and of course it would wreak havoc with the drug cheats who need plenty of notice in order to get the juice out of their bloodstream before testing.

No, maybe the easiest thing to do would just be to go ahead and hold them as planned.

Well why not? Sally Pearson says it will be OK.