Coronavirus: Australian Olympic baseball hopeful Steve Kent says delay to games better than playing without fans
Having to wait another year for a shot at his Olympic dream is better than playing in an empty stadium, veteran Australian baseballer Steve Kent says.
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Australia’s national baseball team was supposed to be running on to a diamond in Taiwan this Wednesday for their last chance to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics.
The coronavirus pandemic couldn’t have come at a worse time, resulting in the tournament being postponed, at first until July, then, last week, canned indefinitely when the Olympics were pushed back to 2021.
Canberra-based pitcher Steve Kent is now in his second bid to represent Australia as an Olympian, after the national team failed to qualify for Beijing and after the sport was dropped from the London and Rio de Janeiro games.
Kent said postponing the Tokyo Olympics was a better option than the other prospect athletes had discussed — playing some of the biggest games of their careers in empty stadiums.
Most of Australia’s current squad were dominating junior suburban leagues when a rag-tag team of major league veterans, up-and-comers, and a few amateur beat the odds and came home from the Athens games with a silver medal.
The national team, which Kent was first selected for at 17, “always seems to step it up to another level” when taking on powerhouses like Cuba and Japan.
“I’ve always said I would keep playing for Australia so long as I’m performing at a level that’s good enough to be selected,” he said.
“But I’ve also said I’d be happy to hang them up after competing at an Olympics.”
No matter the sport, few of the athletes who will represent Australia in Tokyo next year are household names, many have never earnt a real living from sport, and most, like Kent, fit their training commitments in around jobs and families.
Baseball Australia, the ACT Institute of Sport and the AIS were doing all they could to supporting athletes as they refocused on the goal of competing in Tokyo in 2021, he said.
“Trying to be a dad and still play at a level that warrants be going to the Olympics, I have had a lot of really great support,” he said.
At 30, Kent is “getting on” as far as professional athletes go, but says some older or more injury-prone members of the squad had been hoping the Tokyo games would be the swan song to their professional careers.
Part of the challenge, he said, was the struggle to keep in shape when every gym in the country has closed, meaning Kent is now fitting in much of his training on a treadmill on his garage.