{"id":418789,"date":"2020-02-25T10:28:58","date_gmt":"2020-02-25T17:28:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/?p=418789"},"modified":"2020-02-26T00:36:50","modified_gmt":"2020-02-26T07:36:50","slug":"tokyo-olympic-games-cancellation-d-day-late-may-over-new-war-coronavirus-says-dick-pound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/tokyo-olympic-games-cancellation-d-day-late-may-over-new-war-coronavirus-says-dick-pound\/","title":{"rendered":"Tokyo Olympic Games: Cancellation D-Day Late May Over &#8220;New War&#8221; Coronavirus, Says Dick Pound"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Late May is the deadline by which the<strong> International Olympic Committee<\/strong> and <strong>Tokyo 2020 Games organisers<\/strong> will have to make a decision on whether to proceed, postpone or cancel as a result of the threat posed by the coronavirus now spreading around the globe.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s the view of <strong>Dick Pound<\/strong>, the former Commonwealth swimming champion and longest-serving member of the IOC, who believes that if it came to postponement, cancellation is the more likely outcome because:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;This is the new war and you have to face it.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"Component-root-0-2-54 Component-p-0-2-46\">In an exclusive interview with <em>Associated Press (AP),<\/em> Pound estimates that there is a three-month window in which a decision will have to be taken on what is currently an official <strong>World Health Organisation Emergency<\/strong> but gets ever closer to becoming a pandemic.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Component-root-0-2-54 Component-p-0-2-46\">Pound, an IOC member since 1978, reports AP, was not alarmist but frank about the chances of the Games getting underway in Tokyo on July 24. He said:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"Component-root-0-2-54 Component-p-0-2-46\">\u201cYou could certainly go to two months out if you had to. A lot of things have to start happening. You\u2019ve got to start ramping up your security, your food, the Olympic Village, the hotels, The media folks will be in there building their studios.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-1470255291270-0\" class=\"DFPSlot Component-dfp-0-2-50 Component-ad-0-2-12\" data-key=\"ad-placeholder\" data-google-query-id=\"CKe8pICT7ecCFZsGiwod8SoJhQ\">\n<div id=\"google_ads_iframe_15786418\/APNews\/site\/article\/midarticle1_0__container__\">If it came to postponement, then cancellation was the more likely outcome, Pound speculated:<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"Component-root-0-2-54 Component-p-0-2-46\">\u201cThis is the new war and you have to face it. In and around that time, I\u2019d say folks are going to have to ask: \u2018Is this under sufficient control that we can be confident about going to Tokyo, or not?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<h3>The Growing Statistics Of A Spreading Virus<\/h3>\n<p>As of today:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li class=\"Component-root-0-2-54 Component-p-0-2-46\"><strong>China:\u00a0<\/strong>508 new cases and another 71 deaths, 68 of them in the central city of Wuhan, where the epidemic was first detected in December. The updates bring mainland China\u2019s totals to 77,658 cases and 2,663 deaths.<\/li>\n<li class=\"Component-root-0-2-54 Component-p-0-2-46\"><strong>South Korea:<\/strong> now has the second-most cases in the world with 977, including 10 deaths.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Japan:<\/strong> of some 160 cases of infection beyond those reported on board the ill-fated Diamond Princess cruise liner, there have been four deaths so far.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, Bali\/Indonesia<\/strong> have all reported cases<\/li>\n<li class=\"Component-root-0-2-54 Component-p-0-2-46\"><strong>Middle East:<\/strong> clusters of the illness are now appearing in the Middle East, Iran the worst affected so far.<\/li>\n<li class=\"Component-root-0-2-54 Component-p-0-2-46\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2020\/feb\/25\/coronavirus-fears-grow-as-more-cases-found-across-europe\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Europe is on high alert<\/a>:<\/strong> Italy is the worst affected, with more than 320 cases of infection arising in just three days, quarantine restrictions imposed on whole communities in the north and 11 deaths reported so far. Cases have also been reported in France, Britain, Germany, Austria and Croatia, Spain, including the island of Tenerife off the African coast, Austria and <a class=\"u-underline\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/switzerland\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-link-name=\"auto-linked-tag\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\">Switzerland.<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"Component-root-0-2-54 Component-p-0-2-46\"><strong>Australia and Africa:<\/strong> the first cases have been reported<\/li>\n<li>In the<strong> United States<\/strong>, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)<\/a> has warned that the coronavirus outbreak could cause \u201csevere disruption\u201d to the lives of ordinary Americans, and urged families and communities to start making preparations.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Pound encourages athletes to keep training<\/h3>\n<p>About 11,000 athletes are expected to compete at the Olympics, and another 4,400 at the Paralympics, which open on August 25. Pound tells AP:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"Component-root-0-2-54 Component-p-0-2-46\">\u201cAs far as we all know you\u2019re going to be in Tokyo. All indications are at this stage that it will be business as usual. So keep focused on your sport and be sure that the IOC is not going to send you into a pandemic situation.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"Component-root-0-2-54 Component-p-0-2-46\">In the history of the Olympic Games, 1916, 1940 (which were to have been staged in Tokyo but were cancelled as Japan waged war on China, on the citizens of other countries by placing them in brutal intern camps, and then beyond its region in World War II) and 1944 were cancelled due to war, while 1976, 1980 and 1984 were affected by boycotts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Component-root-0-2-54 Component-p-0-2-46\">Pound echoed the IOC&#8217;s official stance: that consultations with the World Health Organization, a United Nations body, are continuous &#8211; and the Games will go on, as of yet. Pound noted the hard decision ahead, however, saying:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"Component-root-0-2-54 Component-p-0-2-46\">\u201cIt\u2019s a big, big, big decision and you just can\u2019t take it until you have reliable facts on which to base it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"Component-root-0-2-54 Component-p-0-2-46\">So far, advice &#8220;doesn\u2019t call for cancellation or postponement of the Olympics&#8221;. He added:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"Component-root-0-2-54 Component-p-0-2-46\">&#8220;You just don\u2019t postpone something on the size and scale of the Olympics. There\u2019s so many moving parts, so many countries and different seasons, and competitive seasons, and television seasons. You can\u2019t just say, we\u2019ll do it in October.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>On the likelihood of using another city, Pound noted:\u00a0\u201cTo 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.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"Component-root-0-2-54 Component-p-0-2-46\">AP reported: &#8220;London mayoral candidate <strong>Shaun Bailey<\/strong> has suggested the British capital as an alternative. <strong>Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike<\/strong> suggested that was an inappropriate offer, using the virus as political campaign fodder.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"Component-root-0-2-54 Component-p-0-2-46\">Pound said he would not favor a dispersal of events over various venues around the world, the Games very much a festival of unity in sport. Division would simply create &#8220;a series of world championships,\u201d said Pound, a Canadian lawyer.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Component-root-0-2-54 Component-p-0-2-46\">U.S. broadcasters, NBC the lead player, would be unlikely to favour a few months of postponement, Pound believed, because of commitments to American football, college football, European soccer, basketball, baseball, and ice hockey. Similar problems existed in other parts of the world, said Pound, adding:<\/p>\n<p class=\"Component-root-0-2-54 Component-p-0-2-46\">\u201cIt would be tough to get the kind of blanket coverage that people expect around the Olympic Games. It\u2019s certainly tougher than it would have been in 1964 in Tokyo when you didn\u2019t have the saturation sports schedule on television.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"Component-root-0-2-54 Component-p-0-2-46\">Japan is officially spending $12.6 billion to organize the Olympics, a national audit board having suggested the true figure is twice that.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Component-root-0-2-54 Component-p-0-2-46\">A year-long postponement would mean holding &#8220;the bubble together for an extra year&#8221;, said Pound, while clashes with other sports events would be a serious problem, contracts in place for such things as the World Championships in swimming.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Component-root-0-2-54 Component-p-0-2-46\">The IOC has an emergency fund for such crisis points. It is said to be worth $1bn and is set aside for \u201cunforeseeable circumstances\u201d. The $1bn would affect the funding of sports federations such as FINA because, as Pound put it:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"Component-root-0-2-54 Component-p-0-2-46\">\u201cIt\u2019s not an insurable risk and it\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"Component-root-0-2-54 Component-p-0-2-46\">Broadcasters are likely to be insured for some losses. The hit would be big, nonetheless. AP noted that about 73% of the IOC\u2019s $5.7 billion income in a four-year Olympic cycle is from broadcast rights.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Component-root-0-2-54 Component-p-0-2-46\">The Games and all involved were now in the hands of what happens next with the coronavirus. Pound pointed to a pandemic that did not affect the Olympics because war already had: the 1918 Spanish Flu outbreak infected an estimated\u00a0500\u00a0million people around the world,<sup id=\"cite_ref-FOOTNOTETaubenbergerMorens2006_2-0\" class=\"reference\"><\/sup>\u00a0about 27% of the-then world population.\u00a0The death toll has been estimated at between 40 and 50 million (some estimates as high as 100 million), making it one of the deadliest epidemics in human history. Said Pound:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"Component-root-0-2-54 Component-p-0-2-46\">\u201cIf it gets to be something like the Spanish Flu. At that level of lethality, then everybody\u2019s got to take their medicine.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Australia&#8217;s Olympic boss tells his team to &#8220;stay calm\u00a0and plan to be in Tokyo on July 24 and plan to be at your best&#8230;&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Australian Team Chef de Mission <strong>Ian Chesterman<\/strong> had a clear message to the athletes on his team: \u201cStay calm, get on with what you can control which is your training and plan to be in Tokyo on July 24 and plan to be at your best because its going to be a great Games.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo date I\u2019ve had no athletes express grave concerns to me at all\u2026\u2026.but athlete safety and welfare is our primary concern at the AOC and that\u2019s fundamental to the way we operate our teams.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Chesterman said that a planned Australian Team planning visit to the Games site at the end of March would go ahead.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have a planning that visit at the end of next month and we will be proceeding with that as an important part of what we want to do.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe will continue to take advice as we go along but it is full stream ahead for our planning at the moment and for the athletes it\u2019s full steam ahead for them and their training.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut we are aware of the issues, we are dealing very seriously with the issues, Coronavirus is a very serious issue and should be taken very seriously at every level.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI know that in Japan it is being taken very seriously, by the Japanese Government, the Tokyo Organising committee, I know the IOC their medical experts are also very much across the issues and taking advice from the world health organisations.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFrom our point of view we continue to look to the IOC to take the lead on these matters, they have that access to and have expertise and information across all those areas, but we are all working towards being in Tokyo and having a very successful Games.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll the advice we are getting is that the Games will take place on July 24 and all we can do is take advice we are given and take that seriously.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are taking it very seriously and we are not going to go through the next few months avoiding the conversation, we are dealing with it, we are taking all the advice and we are all confident the Games will go ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Late May is the deadline by which the International Olympic Committee and Tokyo 2020 Games organisers will have to make a decision on whether to proceed, postpone or cancel as<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7532,"featured_media":409411,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,10],"tags":[120906,120856,121252,121634,121633,121635,121632,58477],"class_list":["post-418789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-world","tag-cancellation","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-decision","tag-games-are-on","tag-late-may","tag-postponement","tag-tokyo-2020"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\r\n<title>Tokyo Olympic Games: Cancellation D-Day Late May Over &quot;New War&quot; Coronavirus, Says Dick Pound - Swimming World<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\r\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/tokyo-olympic-games-cancellation-d-day-late-may-over-new-war-coronavirus-says-dick-pound\/\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Tokyo Olympic Games: Cancellation D-Day Late May Over &quot;New War&quot; Coronavirus, Says Dick Pound\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Late May is the deadline by which the International Olympic Committee and Tokyo 2020 Games organisers will have to make a decision on whether to proceed, postpone or cancel as\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/tokyo-olympic-games-cancellation-d-day-late-may-over-new-war-coronavirus-says-dick-pound\/\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Swimming World\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/SwimmingWorld\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-02-25T17:28:58+00:00\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-02-26T07:36:50+00:00\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/vmrw8k5h.tinifycdn.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/Swimming-World-January-2020-A-Voice-For-the-Sport-Tokyo2020-skyline-Photo-Courtesy-Twitter-Refugees-Olympic-tokyo-olympics.jpg\" \/>\r\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1000\" \/>\r\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"720\" \/>\r\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\r\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Craig Lord\" \/>\r\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\r\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@swimmingworld\" \/>\r\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@swimmingworld\" \/>\r\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Craig Lord\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"8 minutes\" \/>\r\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/tokyo-olympic-games-cancellation-d-day-late-may-over-new-war-coronavirus-says-dick-pound\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/tokyo-olympic-games-cancellation-d-day-late-may-over-new-war-coronavirus-says-dick-pound\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Craig Lord\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f81fc3f5d0be27b50b7d6e4a217710c9\"},\"headline\":\"Tokyo Olympic Games: Cancellation D-Day Late May Over &#8220;New War&#8221; 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