{"id":422276,"date":"2020-03-13T02:27:09","date_gmt":"2020-03-13T09:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/?p=422276"},"modified":"2020-03-13T04:00:45","modified_gmt":"2020-03-13T11:00:45","slug":"tokyo-2020-olympic-games-will-be-called-off-for-july-if-who-says-it-should-be-says-ioc-boss-thomas-bach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/tokyo-2020-olympic-games-will-be-called-off-for-july-if-who-says-it-should-be-says-ioc-boss-thomas-bach\/","title":{"rendered":"Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games Will Be Called Off For July If WHO Says They Should Be, Suggests IOC Boss Thomas Bach"},"content":{"rendered":"

The International Olympic Committee <\/strong>will follow the recommendation of the\u00a0World Health Organisation\u00a0<\/strong>(WHO) on whether to cancel or postpone the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games<\/strong> <\/a>as a response to the containment and control measures required to combat the\u00a0coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, IOC president \u00a0Thomas Bach <\/strong>has suggested.<\/p>\n

As Australia prepared to become the latest nation to cancel national swimming championships<\/a> and\u00a0the Tokyo metropolitan government postponed the opening ceremony of the Olympic Aquatics Centre<\/strong><\/a>, Bach was invited time and time again to get \u00a0beyond the standard “Games will go on from July 24” mantra, in an interview with German television ARD.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Eventually, the reporter changed tack and asked Bach “if the WHO recommends that you should not go ahead with the Games in July, will you call a halt?” Bach hesitated a touch before replying:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will follow the advice of the WHO.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A relative tidal wave of postponements and cancellations of \u00a0Olympic trials and championships has hit swimming in the past few days. The Japan Swim Olympic trials for the host nation are die to take place at what was to have been a newly inaugurated Aquatics Centre on April 1-8. After the postponement of the pool’s opening ceremony today in Tokyo, Japanese swim fans took to social media to ask: are the trials on or off? An answer is expected next week at the latest, sources tell Swimming World.<\/em><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the consequences of lockdown policies far and wide present the IOC and Tokyo 2020 organisers will a dilemma even bigger than cancelled meets: even if the coronavirus is brought under sufficient control by July, the preparations of athletes will have been thrown so far off course for some that calls are already being made to postpone on grounds of fairness to all.<\/a><\/p>\n

In the ARD interview<\/em>, Bach<\/a> acknowledged that there are \u201cserious problems with qualification competitions” and said that the IOC and other relevant parties such as international federations and their members “will have to react very flexibly”. However, he made no mention of the fact that pools are closed in Scandinavia<\/a>, Italy, Spain and athletes are being sent home from national training centres under Government mandate on public health grounds.<\/p>\n

\"SwimmingBach said that countries hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, must be offered \u201cfair qualification under these very difficult conditions”. That would not address the reality on the ground, in which leading swimmers cannot find adequate water space in some circumstances, while in others their access to their usual coaches and facilities has been limited or removed altogether.<\/p>\n

In the early Olympic era, the structure of society and the nature of amateur sport delivered many uneven and unfair competition conditions. In today’s professional era, at a time when sport is big business (and very much so for the IOC), holding a Games when it is widely appreciated that athletes and programs have been knocked off course in uneven measure is a test Olympic bosses and Tokyo 2020 organisers have yet to acknowledge.<\/p>\n

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has also raised a parallel issue<\/strong><\/a>: it is monitoring international testing for “gaps”, in an attempt to ensure fairness for all, the pandemic having caused anti-doping missions to be cancelled in some places in the interest of public health and the well-being of testers, as well as athletes.<\/p>\n

Japanese organisers have so far insisted that the pandemic will not derail the Games scheduled to run from July 24 to August 8, even if major sporting events, travel and financial markets are already seeing massive disruption worldwide.<\/p>\n

When asked what he thought might happen to the Olympic Games in a week when the NBA, the NCAA, the Ivy League, USA Swimming and others called a halt to competitions, despite the obvious economic impact of doing so, U.S. President Donald Trump<\/strong> echoed the view of Tokyo 2020\u00a0executive board member <\/a>Haruyuki Takahashi\u00a0<\/strong>and the voices of ever-larger numbers in the sports community are suggesting, when he told reporters at the Oval Office:<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe they postpone it for a year.\u00a0You know, I like that better than I like having empty stadiums all over the place. I think if you cancel it, make it a year later, that’s a better alternative than doing it with no crowd.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Australia added its name to the wave of swimming cancellations and postponements today as it called off the Australian senior and age Championships. That followed, in the past 36 hours: the Spanish nationals and Olympic trials called off, the Danish Open and Olympic Trials, the Swim Open, Stockholm, the French Junior nationals all cancelled, as were the NCAA Championships; a 30-day suspension of events by USA Swimming; a Norwegian lockdown that cancelled sport; FINA postponements; Canada considering what to do about its Olympic trials; and cancellations and a plea from Italy to halt the Olympic Games to avoid Tokyo 2020 going ahead in July when many of the world\u2019s best swimmers may no longer be in the kind of shape they would have been but for the pandemic and its knock-on effects.<\/p>\n

An Extraordinary Moment In Swimming History:<\/h2>\n