Australian athletes might not participate in Tokyo Olympics due to coronavirus
The Tokyo Olympics have three months to decide their fate, with coronavirus the “new war” for the 2020 Games, the IOC’s longest-serving member says. It comes as Australian athletes prepare for the worst amid fears they could be pulled from the event.
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Coronavirus is “the new war” for the Olympics which has three months to decide its fate, according to the International Olympic Committee’s longest-serving member.
It comes as plans for the Tokyo Games have been thrown into disarray, with the Australian Olympic Committee and top athletes saying no one should risk contracting the deadly coronavirus to compete.
Dick Pound said he did not believe moving or postponing the 2020 Olympics — which are slated to run from July 24 to August 9 — would be a possibility, as the deadly bug continues to spread.
But he said late May would be the deadline to make a call.
“You could certainly go to two months out if you had to,” Pound told AP.
“A lot of things have to start happening. You’ve got to start ramping up your security, your food, the Olympic Village, the hotels, The media folks will be in there building their studios.”
Pound, a champion swimmer and former WADA boss who has been a member of the IOC since 1978, said “you’re probably looking at a cancellation” rather than a shift or postponement.
“This is the new war and you have to face it,” he said.
“In and around that time, I’d say folks are going to have to ask: ‘Is this under sufficient control that we can be confident about going to Tokyo, or not?’.”
To disperse the events across the world would not “constitute an Olympic Games”, according to Pound, who declared “you’d end up with a series of world championships”.
To keep the Games in Japan but put on ice for a year would pose the question “if you can hold the bubble together for an extra year”, he said.
“Then of course you have to fit all of this into the entire international sports schedule.”
He said the advice the IOC was currently receiving was obviously that the Games would at this stage continue and that athletes should continue training.
“You just don’t postpone something on the size and scale of the Olympics,” he said.
“There’s so many moving parts, so many countries and different seasons, and competitive seasons, and television seasons. You can’t just say, we’ll do it in October.
“To move the place is difficult because there are few places in the world that could think of gearing up facilities in that short time to put something on.”
He also revealed that the IOC had been developing a fund — which sits at around $1 billion — that could be called upon to assist international sports federations.
“This would be what you normally call a force majeure,” Pound said.
“It’s not an insurable risk and it’s not one that can be attributed to one or the other of the parties. So everybody takes their lumps. There would be a lack of revenue on the Olympic Movement side.”
AUSSIE ATHLETES COULD BE PULLED FROM GAMES
Australia has not ruled out pulling its athletes from the Tokyo Olympics if the coronavirus continues to spread.
More than 750 people have contracted the virus in Japan so far, including at least 634 from the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which was docked and quarantined in Yokohama, near Tokyo.
With the number of infections expected to boom in coming weeks, Australian authorities are on high alert.
But as the world braces for the coronavirus to be declared a global pandemic, the Tokyo 2020 Organising Committee insisted yesterday they would not cancel the Games.
An official spokesman for the committee said: “We have never discussed cancelling the Games. Preparations for the Games are continuing as planned.”
“Countermeasures against infectious diseases constitute an important part of our plans to host a safe and secure Games.
“To address the novel coronavirus issue, the Government of Japan has established the Novel Coronavirus Response Headquarters … and intends to pay full attention to the virus’s impacts and thoroughly respond to them.”
Australian Olympic Committee chief executive Matt Carroll last night said no Australian athlete would be put in harm’s way, citing confidence in the International Olympic Committee and the World Health Organisation.
“They won’t put anyone at risk,” he told the Herald Sun.
“The wellbeing of our athletes is utmost. And we won’t put anyone at risk either.
“If there are any training camps or competitions in areas where there are outbreaks, like Italy … then obviously we work with the authorities and work with our sports on that.”
Mr Carroll said it was a “wait and watch and be careful” situation.
Chief medical officer Professor Brendan Murphy said it was too early to say what impact the virus would have the on the Olympics preparations.
“Japan has a significant outbreak and we still haven’t seen the full impact of the Diamond Princess outbreak,” he said.
“We’re making a daily evaluation of the effects.”
Sports Minister Richard Colbeck says Aussie sports stars should not participate at the risk of their health.
“Australian athletes are ready to make their mark at the Tokyo Olympics — but it should not be at the risk of their health and wellbeing,” he said.
Triple-Olympic gold medallist Grant Hackett said Mr Colbeck’s approach of waiting to see how things play out was “pragmatic and sensible”.
“We have to put individuals’ health and safety first, as much as everyone’s trained for this and it only comes around once every four years,” Hackett said.
If there was a risk, but it was not deemed significant enough to warrant a change, or the IOC was unwilling to move, cancel or postpone the games, Hackett said it would “probably be up to the athletes as to whether to go or not”.
“If there were dire circumstances, you would be mad to go,” he said.
Two-time Olympian Tamsyn Manou said it would be crushing for athletes if the games were cancelled or postponed but they were training as usual until they heard otherwise.
“At the end of the day, you have to remember that sport is just a sport, and life is far more important,” Manou said.
“If it gets to that point, hopefully people would be smart enough to go, yes, it really sucks, but let’s get on top of this and make health the priority.”
The Herald Sun believes senior federal government health officials are extremely concerned about the outbreak after Japanese officials released Diamond Princess passengers before they completed their two weeks of isolation.
Four passengers from the ship have so far died and hundreds more have been infected, and that number is expected to explode within weeks as the released passengers fall ill and pass the condition on.
The rapid spread of the virus has already forced Australia’s Olympic women’s water polo squad to shift their planning training camp because it was too close to the Italian epicentre where at least seven people have died.
Training for 80,000 Olympics volunteers in Tokyo was also postponed on Friday, pushed to May.
Officials last week limited participation in the Tokyo Marathon to only elite athletes.
Torch relay organisers have also taken measures to avoid the spread of the virus during the four-month journey from Greece to Tokyo, with relay director Sakis Vassiliadis telling media that it will do “whatever is humanly possible to have no problems whatsoever during the relay”.
All athletes — who are effectively nominated by their sport and then selected by the AOC to the team — are entitled to make an individual call on whether they want to attend the Tokyo Games.
Australia’s swimmers are on individual training programs at training camps across Australia, with some swimmers set to compete in the USA in coming months.
The team will then come together in Japan in the week before the Games for a final training camp which is still scheduled.
The US Olympics team has been told to train and prepare as planned for the games.
It has been reported Team USA, last week told its individual sport bodies that it’s “been given no reason to deviate from any of our Tokyo Games planning and preparation.”
To delay, cancel or move the games would be an almost unprecedented move for organisers. Since the International Olympic Committee was founded in 1896, the games have only been cancelled thrice.
World War I saw the games cancelled once and World War II stopped them running twice.
The federal government this week raised the travel advice level for the Asian nation.
“Based on advice from Australia’s Chief Medical Officer, we now recommend you ‘exercise a high degree of caution’ in Japan due to a heightened risk of sustained local transmission of coronavirus (COVID-19),” the Smartraveller website warns.
“There is a heightened risk of sustained local transmission of coronavirus (COVID-19) in Japan.”
Australians visiting Japan are being advised to closely monitor their health.
More than 79,000 people have so far been affected by the virus and around 2500 people have died.
Most of the deaths have been in China but there have also been multiple in Japan, Italy and the Middle East.
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While many athletes are anxiously watching the coronavirus developments, three-time Olympian Lisa Weightman says she is not nervous about returning to Japan for the Tokyo Olympics.
Weightman — gunning to become just the third Australian to compete in and finish four Olympic marathons — ran the Osaka Marathon just last month, as she eyes qualification for the July Games.
It was before travel warnings were heightened, but the Melburnian said her bad luck in competing in major events had assured there would be something to worry about in the lead-up.
“I’m not nervous about going back,” Weightman, 41, told the Herald Sun.
“There have been many times where I’ve travelled for an event. When my husband and I were in Osaka, we actually both commented that whenever we go away, there seems to be a world crisis.
“This is another one to add to the mix. We’re all trying to perform at our absolute best and produce the best career-defining moment, and going to the Olympics is the pinnacle.
“Obviously we want to make sure that we’re all healthy and safe in the process, but I’m sure that the officials will make the right decisions for everyone’s safety when the time comes.”
She said that travel warnings had begun being lifted towards the end of her recent Japanese trip, and that she had not seen any extra precautions being taken at that stage.
She was struck down with sinusitis in the lead-up to the Rio Olympics, where she finished 31st.
Weightman’s comments came as fellow runner Sinead Diver — who will next week fly to Japan as a pacer in the Nagoya marathon — expressed her concern at visiting Japan and facing potential trouble when returning to Australia to continue her Olympic preparations.
The Tokyo Marathon on March 1 — a qualifying event for the Olympics — was recently restricted to only elite runners.
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