To the COVID-19 They reached 48 hours between Sunday and Monday to extinguish the small hope that they still maintained Tokyo 2020 and the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The pressures of sports federations, national Olympic committees and athletes, as well as the fall to the image level, were already difficult to resist, but the coup de grace to the Olympic Games was given by the World Health Organization (WHO) itself.
"The information we received from the WHO in the last 48 hours was catastrophic", he admitted during an interview with Infobae Mark Adams, IOC spokesman and a man in permanent contact with its president, the German Thomas Bach. "It was not secret information, but in the public domain: the WHO secretary-general announced that the crisis was accelerating rapidly, and information about what could happen in Africa was also a factor."
When Adams speaks of the 48 hours, he refers to what happened between Sunday and Tuesday. The IOC announced on Sunday that it was open to the possibility of postponing the Games that were to be held from July 24 to August 10. He spoke four weeks to make a decision. Two days later he took it: the Games are for next year. How is it possible that four weeks pass in just 48 hours?
"We didn't need the four weeks to decide, that was misinterpreted," explains Adams. "What happened is that when the WHO, with whom we are in daily contact, confirmed to us that the pandemic is accelerating, the focus changed. We had guarantees that the athletes would be fine in Japan, that they would not be in danger, but Our focus became the difficult situation for athletes in other countries, many of them unable to train and prepare for the Games, even without having been able to compete in qualifying tournaments. "
"A lot has changed in these two days since Sunday," he told Tuesday at Spanish Television (TVE), the Spanish Juan Antonio Samaranch, son of the former president and vice president of the IOC. “The WHO spoke of the lack of control of the pandemic on all continents. That made us and our beloved partners in Japan understand that it was very difficult for the Games to be maintained within the year 2020. ”
A single piece of information is enough to give you an idea of what the postponement of Tokyo 2020 means: never in peacetime have the Olympics changed their dates. But the coronavirus devastates everything, also with the history that has been written since 1896. Curious, it is the second time that a world crisis alters the plans of the Japanese capital: Tokyo was the designated venue for the 1940 Games, but these were canceled for the Second World War like those of 1944 and, due to the First World War, those of 1916. Japan would finally receive in 1964 those Games of 1940. Now it will do, if nothing else happens, those of 2020 in 2021.
Sitting next to Gianni Infantino on Monday, FIFA President, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus appealed to the sport to explain the situation: "More than 300,000 cases of coronavirus have been reported in almost every country The pandemic is accelerating. It took 67 days to go from the first case to the first 100,000, 11 days for the second 100,000 and only four days for the third 100,000. It is accelerating. You cannot win a football match just defending, you have to attack too. "
Among the defensive measures, the IOC provides an elemental: it desists from gathering hundreds of thousands of people over 17 days in Tokyo. Is he doing it for the information provided by the WHO Director-General? Yes, but not only for that: as the pandemic grew, the pressure on Bach and Tokyo increased almost at the same speed. A couple of days more and the damage to the image of Olympism would have been difficult to repair.
"I think that the IOC is a wise decision, we take the time to do things well, without worries. To recalculate. I think that ultimately this will value the IOC, because if they had continued to insist on the Games, the reaction could have been probably not very positive, "he told InfobaeFernando Aguerre, the Argentine who chairs the International Surfing Association (ISA), one of the 33 sports that must reorganize their plans for Tokyo.
When Aguerre says "probably not very positive" he is being elegant and diplomatic. The reaction they were already noticing in the Lausanne offices, the IOC headquarters, was increasingly negative and irritated. And beyond the questions raised by two key federations such as the athletics and swimming federations, beyond the growing concern of many athletes and the sponsors themselves, who were beginning to think about whether they could be associated with an event that was generated antipathy, there is a country that played a strong role in the public eye: Canada.
First was Richard Pound, a prestigious Montreal lawyer and former Olympic swimmer who is the longest serving member of the IOC: 42 years. In 2001 he tried to succeed Samaranch as president, but his colleagues chose Jacques Rogge from Belgium, which he never forgot. He was president of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and is a free spirit who speaks without any filter, periodically complicating the IOC's strategy.
It was he who on February 25 spoke of a possible "postponement," and even "cancellation," when the matter was taboo in Lausanne. And it was he, on Monday night, who passed him USA Today that there would be no Games in July and August. But Pound has a disciple he will be proud of, former ice hockey player Hayley Wickenheiser.
Already retired and owner of four Olympic gold medals, Wickenheiser has been a member of the IOC since 2014 representing athletes. A week ago he released a tweet that was a torpedo to the waterline of the IOC image. "I can no longer keep quiet," she said, and asked that the Games not be held. And, following the decision announced Tuesday, she celebrated: "I am really proud of what Canada did."
Wickenheiser, 41, has a double sensitivity, that of a former athlete and that of a doctor, as he is completing the last year of his medical career: "I have lived through the stress and anxiety of the doctors and nurses with whom I have been working". Don't ask her to ignore the coronavirus.
The popularity of the former hockey player grew so much, that not a few wonder what future he has in the IOC, where Bach has not yet decided if he will seek reelection in 2021.
"The situation was becoming very complex," he told Infobae a man with long experience in the Games, who asked not to be quoted: “You had athlete after athlete asking for the Games to be canceled and the national Olympic committees that were speaking louder and louder. Bach's image was beginning to be very bad, because he kept going despite all the medical advice and people's feelings. And politically there were also difficulties in Japan. "Are they going to bring tens of thousands of infected potentials into the country?" Asked many people."
"We have a lot of pieces to fit into this puzzle as enormous as it is difficult," admitted Bach, who is not concerned about the economic impact: the Games are protected by insurance policies and television – highlighting the powerful NBC, which covers a large part of the IOC budget, will honor their commitments, although perhaps requesting some reduction in the amount to be paid, which is around 1,200 million dollars in an agreement that involves several years.
But the IOC President does not exaggerate, it is a puzzle. In 2021 the Athletics and Swimming World Championships, the two main sports of the Games, must be played. Sebastian Coe, the legendary British athlete and IAAF president, has already shown his willingness to change the dates. It is not a minor World Cup, it is the World Cup in Oregon, United States. And Oregon is the seat of the most powerful Nike, questioned for his ties to Coe and Alberto Salazar, the coach sanctioned with a four-year suspension for promoting doping.
The Olympic torch, which was due to start its journey throughout Japan these days in Fukushima, will stay in the city of the nuclear accident after the 2011 tsunami. No one knows for how long today, because another aspect to define is when the Games will be held. It is known that they will not be in 2020, but the date of 2021 is not defined. Late spring (boreal) or summer. Without forgetting that from June 11 to July 11 there is Eurocup and Copa América. The Games also cannot coincide with those events.
If everything goes as the Japanese would like, the Games will be in the last week of July and the first week of August 2021, as they should be this year. But the name will remain, Tokyo 2020, despite the fact that it will be, undeniably, Tokyo 2021. The first Summer Games in history to be held in an odd year, just a curious detail in a crazed world reality and that the Olympic world could no longer ignore.