The real impact of the COVID-19 pandemic really had a major impact on our nation when the National Basketball Association (NBA) and National Hockey League (NHL) postponed their seasons. When Major League Baseball (MLB) canceled the rest of spring training and then pushed back the start of their season right now by two weeks. The NCAA Men’s and Women’s Basketball Tournament being cancelled completely. At the start this though, this pandemic delivered a difficult blow to the sports world when it put a postponement on the one sporting event that a lot of us were counting on to really bring not just the U.S.A. but our world together at a time where we are more divided than ever.
On Tuesday, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced that the 2020 Summer Olympics, that were going to be held from July 24-August 9 in Tokyo, Japan are postponed until 2021.
In a joint statement, Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and the IOC, led by President Thomas Bach said that the Olympic Games will be held no later than the summer of 2021.
“We have to think about the current outbreak of the coronavirus,” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said.
He added by saying that holding the Olympics games when they do take place will “symbolize victory over the virus. We will like to fulfill our responsibility.”
Veteran member of the IOC Dick Pound said added by saying that the number of COVID-019 cases coming up everyday that it was “pretty clear” that it would have been reckless to hold the Olympics Games in July.
USA Basketball also put out a statement saying, “The decision to postpone the 2020 Olympics was a difficult decision and it was the correct one. USA Basketball is in full agreement and support of the decision made by the IOC and the Japanese government to postpone the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games. The health, wellness, and safety of the world, as well as our athletes, coaches, staff, and fans is USA Basketball’s No. 1 priority and this postponement was necessary to ensure that. As further details become known, USA Basketball will work towards fielding and best preparing its Olympic basketball teams for 2021 and we will do so in a way that we hope will continue USA Basketball’s Olympic legacy and continue to make all Americans proud.”
The IOC also said that the move was made to “safeguard the health of athletes, everybody involved in the Olympic Games and the international community.”
The charge to postpone the 2020 Olympics due to the COVID-19 pandemic was led by the United States and Canadian saying that they either “would not or could not” send a team to Tokyo this July led by U.S.A. Swimming and Track and Field.
In a letter to all U.S.A. athletes, United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Sarah Hirshland said, “We heard your concerns and shared them with the IOC. We’ll ensure reimagined Games live up to original promise of Games. Excellence in Team USA is our resilience, overcoming adversity.”
The spread of the Coronavirus had interrupted the qualifying and training procedures this spring for those athletes who wanted to compete in this summer Olympics.
Five-time Olympic Gold Medalist Swimmer and 15-time World Champion Gold Medal Swimmer Katie Ledecky echoed those same sentiments in a tweet @kateledecky that said, “As we stand together to meet today’s challenges, we can dream about a wonderful Olympics in a beautiful country. Now is the time to support all those working to heal the sick and keep us all healthy.”
Professional soccer and two-time Olympic Gold Medalist for Team U.S.A. Carli Lloyd also praised the decision by IOC saying to ESPN that “it was the right thing to do.”
“What’s going on right now in this moment is unprecedented. And it’s bigger than any sport.”
The IOC cited reasons for their decision to postpone the games included the issues with travel, as well as athletic training and drug testing.
The other aspect of this as our nation and the globe is having to social distance itself to contain the spread of the virus a lot of Olympic hopefuls or those that have qualified to compete in the Olympic Games in Tokyo, especially U.S.A. athletes are in places where they cannot train properly.
“Most of the world is actually not able to leave. Go to a training facility,” two-time Olympic Gold Medal in the triple jump Christian Taylor said. “You have the preparation of not being on an even playing field. And that’s something we have to consider.”
The IOC also said that it was going to take up to four weeks to announce their decision to postpone the games. But in the end with all that has happened there was simply no way for the games to proceed this summer.
“I am overwhelmed just with satisfaction that finally a decision was made,” USA Olympic Athlete Lolo Jones said earlier this week of the cancellation of the 2020 Olympic Games.
She also said to ESPN’s Mike Greenberg on “Get Up” on Tuesday morning that up until the last few days the IOC was telling the athletes to continue to train and stay in shape towards the Summer Olympics.
“It’s about time,” Greenberg said about the Olympics being finally postponed. “The reality is that this was inevitable from the beginning of this, and candidly there was a much better chance that almost anything else, including the NCAA (Basketball) Tournament was gonna get played this year.”
“They were putting themselves and others in harms way at times during this span of the virus pandemic in order to try to find ways to work out…So, candidly I understand there were a lot of balls in the air in this thing, and it was not easy to do but this was long overdue. And it was probably unfair to the athletes that they waited this long to do it.”
The other aspect of this is fitting all the other events on the Olympic calendar for 2021 like the World Track and Field and Swimming Championships are set for next summer. The 206 countries, consisting of at least 11,000 athletes have to hold their Olympic trials to determine their squads.
To put this into perspective, the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil the world was dealing with the frightening Zika fever, a virus that was spread through a bite from a mosquito but did not halt the 2016 Summer Olympics. The Coronavirus has killed in total across the globe over 20,916 lives of the 480,266 confirmed cases, including 1,132 lives lost here in the United States out of the 80,027 cases, according to John Hopkins/NBC News poll, updated from Mar. 26, 2020 at 5:16 p.m., and seemingly rising by the minute.
Going back even further, by the time the 1920 Summer Olympics took place in Antwerp, Belgium, the influenza pandemic that had a grip on our world from 1918-1919, known today as the aforementioned World War I that claimed between 20 and 40 million lives.
This is the first time the Summer Olympics have been postponed during peacetime in our world. They have been canceled three times due to either World War I or World War II in 1916, 1940, and 1944. This will also be the first time that the Summer Olympics, which Japan has been playing for the last seven years, according to T.J. Holmes of ABC News will happen outside the scheduled year.
Even with the postponement, the Summer Olympics when they are eventually held will still be called the 2020 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020 and the Olympic Flame will remain stored and displayed in Fukushima, Japan.
The other aspect of the 2020 Olympics being canceled this summer is the legal and financial considerations of not having this summer Olympic Games proceed on schedule. But then there is the lost opportunity to achieve that incredible milestone of having the chance to represent not just your family and all those that helped you reach the pinnacle moment of your athletic career but the chance to represent your country and having a throngs of people cheering you on to victory in person, on television or a smart device.
It is an even higher level of disappointment when you are a part of a team and you are not able to have the chance to compete for the greatest prize in your career like a Gold Medal.
One person who can speak to both the individual aspect and the team aspect of is three-time Olympic participant and two-time Gold Medalist for U.S. Women’s Soccer team Julie Foudy, who now is a soccer analyst for ESPN.
“They are heartbroken. And especially as an Olympian you have this on your calendar,” Foudy said to Hannah Storm on the Tuesday evening’s edition of ESPN’s “Sportscenter” about the heartbreak the athletes of the U.S. seeing the 2020 Games moved to at least next summer.
“It’s four years out. You know it. You train for it. So, you can understand there’s heartbreak there but overall, the overriding emotion has been that they think it’s the right decision. That they weren’t able to train. That the world needs to come together. And that in a sense of health instead of actual geography. So, it just couldn’t go forward.”
One person who is heartbroken over the decision is two-time Olympic Medal performing artist gymnast Laurie Hernandez who said of the pandemic, “It’s chilling. And it’s definitely something that I’m gonna have to cope and mull around. Just as everybody else.”
Another Olympian who is disappointed about the Olympics being postponed is 12-time Olympic Medalist in Swimming Ryan Lochte, who said to Michael Strahan on ABC News’ “Good Morning America” on Wednesday that the moment we are in right now is “bigger” than him right competing in what would have been his fifth Olympic games.
The other perspective that Foudy talked about with Storm is that unlike the NBA, NHL and MLB and Pro Golf who came easily to the decision to postpone their respective seasons, the Olympics consists of 206 national Olympic committees the IOC has to deal with. Then there are all the coordination, planning and festivities that Tokyo put together to take on the Olympic Games. Plus, it took World Wars for to cancel the Olympics the aforementioned three times that decision has come down.
It also throws a wrench into how as mentioned earlier athletes prepare and train for the Olympics.
However, as Lochte, 37 said to Strahan, training will never be perfect and there will also be a hurdle that you have to get over on this four-year journey that will hopefully put you in position to win a Gold, Silver or Bronze medal.
Lochte said that because of social distancing and the fact a lot of places like gyms and pools are closed has not allowed him to work on his skills in the water, he said that he has done a lot of core/abdominal workouts.
“That’s how us athletes train, and this is just another bump in the road. The Olympics are not canceled. Their just postponed,” he said. “So, you have to adjust your training for another year. And just believe. Trust the process. Everything happens for a reason.”
The Olympics represent us as a world coming together to two weeks-plus to put to the side the things that divide us as a world and gives us the opportunity to compete against one another to see in that moment who is the best individually or as a team. Also, for a moment to learn what makes the opposite tick. That is what allows our world through sports to see how we can all come together. That gets our world leaders into a room and try to come to a consensus on how to bridge the gap that we have seen drive a wedge between all of us.
“The Olympics consider themselves as this beacon of hope. This light, and that they have this opportunity to bring the world,” Foudy said. “And in a sense, this is a situation where you actually given the Coronavirus can’t bring the world together, and it’s nothing they’ve faced before. So, I think from a historical perspective, it was also hard to make that decision.”
The other hard part of this decision from the U.S. side of things is that half of the team has yet to qualify for the Olympics CEO Hirshland said on Tuesday.
That leads to the question will those that qualified be grandfathered into the Olympics when they are rescheduled as well as the World Games in 2021.
Foudy mentioned that the U.S. Women’s Soccer team had qualified for the Olympics, but the U.S. Men have yet to have their chance to qualify.
When the sports world was put on hold, in terms of the NBA and NHL schedule and the NCAA Men’s and Women’s basketball tournaments being cancelled all together, it really brought home how serious the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) Pandemic was and has become in the United States. The postponement of this Summer’s Olympic and Paralympic Games shows how this has become a global issue.
There is a lot that has to be sorted out, in terms of the scheduling everything from what will happen with moving the Olympics to next summer and not have it interfere with what is on the plate for 2021. At least the athletes will have their chance and as long as they have their health, those chances become greater, no matter if this is their first Olympics or their last. Having a chance is a whole lot better than not having a chance at all, especially if you do not have your health.
“This is bigger than the Olympians. This is affecting the entire world. And right now, our main thing is staying safe, and staying healthy. We have to take care of ourselves and stay healthy.”
Information, statistics, and quotations are courtesy of 3/24/2020 6 p.m. edition of ESPN’s “Sportscenter” with Kevin Negandhi and Hannah Storm, with reports from Jeremy Schaap and soccer analyst Julie Foudy; 3/25/2020 7 p.m. edition of ABC News’ “Good Morning America” with Robin Roberts, George Stephanopoulos, Michael Strahan, Amy Roback, and Ginger Zee, with report from T.J. Holmes; 3/25/2020 5 p.m. edition of MSNBC’s “Meet the Press Daily,” with Chuck Todd; and www.google.com.
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