How Tokyo's 2020 hopes turned to ashes – but can rise again in 2021 - MW

It sounds ridiculous, especially now that the Tokyo Olympics have joined the ranks of deferring sports, but just a couple of weeks ago, organizers could still see a rickety route to hosting the Olympics. by 2020.

Japan and China seem to have weathered the worst coronavirus outbreak, so thinking has gone, and most of Europe is still open. So a decision was made: to push, to wait, to hope.

That hope continued to falter, even as the World Health Organization declared a pandemic, major sports were closed and many countries entered the lock. The Olympic flame was lit on a March morning still in Olympia, Greece, and Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee, confirmed that there was no plan for the Bac. But on March 17, there was a subtle change, almost imperceptible, ignored by most people.

Speaking after talking with G7 leaders, Shinzo Abe, Japanese Prime Minister, said: I want to organize the Olympics and Paralympic perfectly, as a proof that humanity will conquer coronavirus and I have received the support of G7 leaders.

For most people that sounds harmless. But in the IOC and elsewhere, the ears start to tingle. That is not what Abe said. Instead, that's what he doesn't have. For the first time, the Japanese leader did not mention hosting the Olympics in July 2020.

Since that time, the decision to postpone the Olympics was inevitable, according to many conversations with people in the Olympic movement about how the world's greatest sporting event took place in a year. . The big question now is when - and how - it will happen.

But it seems that the Japanese are really reluctant to move the Olympics - while Bach was proactive if quietly pushed for a delay. The problem is that the IOC cannot move unless there are Tokyo organizers on board. And that, to put it mildly, is not simple.

The biggest difficulty is that Japanese people cannot lose face. One more thing was that the organizers wanted to host the Olympics in October, while Bach felt it would be until 2021 because there was no guarantee that the Covid-19 virus would be under control in the fall. A third issue is that Tokyo wants a four-week deadline to resolve issues - something the IOC reluctantly granted on Sunday.

But that didn't stop Bach from sneakily moving the wheels to get the deadline forward. It is no coincidence that the Australian Olympic Committee was one of the first to call for the Olympic Games to be transferred to 2021. John Coates, president of AOC, was Bach's close friend and chairman of the coordination committee. IOC of Tokyo for Tokyo. Bach knows he needs a negotiation card. This is one of his strongest points.

As Michael Payne, former senior marketing director of the IOC, who still has a close relationship with the Olympic movement, explained: The word IOC has just officially and through his return channels clearly put great pressure. to make a quick decision, because it realizes that the delay has hurt the athletes and their preparation. Payne, who handled the $ 1 billion deal between Chinese conglomerate Alibaba and the IOC, added: However, there are also plenty of delicate political and diplomatic negotiations involved to ensure that Don't lose face.

That explains why the IOC was happy when Abe came to propose a delay on Tuesday - this, of course, Bach quickly accepted. How could it not, given increasingly fierce criticism from the athletes questioned why the IOC took so long to make a decision. Dina Asher-Smith, the 200m world champion, is especially blunt: This means that athletes have to face another FOUR weeks to find a suitable way to train - while being able to make themselves , coaches, support staff, and loved ones in danger to know how they will be delayed?

Meanwhile, Dai Greene, the former 400m hurdles champion, said he had to flip tractor tires in his partner's farm and use hay bales to jump because the gym was closed. . On Saturday morning, I went to the local 400m track by one of the private schools near where I live, he added. I even looked at the fence and wondered - can I jump over it?

Greene was lucky. With the UK locked up, most athletes are hardly able to practice.

The guard understood the British Olympic Association also had a strong position in the negotiations with the IOC last week. While providing support for hosting the Olympics in July, it came with a heavy warning: if British athletes can't train because of the Covid-19 boom, the BOA will go public. The Olympics call was postponed.

BOA is also increasingly feeling that there is no moral way to bring a team to the Olympics during a pandemic. How, as a source put it, can they justify taking the team doctors from the national health crisis? Especially when its health director, Niall Elliott, was at the front line in Scotland?

A personal poll of more than 1,000 people strengthened the position of the BOA. It found that only 5% of Brits wanted the Olympics to go ahead in July. So what now? It is almost certain that the Olympics - still going to carry the Tokyo 2020 brand - will be held in July 2021, although some IOC members have raised the prospect of a British Cherry Blossom Olympics in May. From to. It seems impossible. Will US media giant NBC, one of IOC's biggest financial backers, really want an Olympics to clash with the later stages of the NBA season?

It will almost certainly be easier to try again next July. World Athletics has shown that they will be happy to transfer the championship in 2021, which is expected to take place in Eugene, until 2022, and Fina, the organizer of the 2021 Swimming World Championships in Japan, in November. 7, have shown that it can also be rearranged.

Of course there will still be major headaches - especially making sure that the venue can be freed whenever the Olympics take place. As Sebastian Coe, who runs the 2012 London Olympics and currently leads the Athletics World, issued it after the IOC announcement: No project manager challenges a city or country like that. Olympics, and the cost to the organizers from the delay is expected to be at least £ 2 billion.

Some headaches, however, may not be as big as assumed. The IOC will still receive millions of broadcast revenue and sponsorship as long as the event takes place, the majority will go to the sports movement. And although there has been some inaccurate speculation that a new athlete's village will have to be built, it is not a big concern when 5,500 village apartments are sold to private owners. for use after the Olympics are not delivered to them until 2023 - and so far, only 500 have been sold. Meanwhile, among those participating in the Olympic movement, there is hope that the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 will become a happy celebration of humanity and harmony after the coronavirus destruction - just like The 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake helped the United States heal after September 11.

The leaders agreed that the Tokyo Olympic Games could become a beacon of hope for the world in these difficult times, and the Olympic flame could become light at the end of the tunnel that the world The current IOC said in a statement.

Such pronunciation often sounds trite. But, in these dark and uncertain times, it hit quite a few perfect notes.

MW