The International Olympic hoped to buy time by declaring a four-week window to decide whether to go forward with the scheduled July 24 start date of the Tokyo Summer Games or switch to a backup plan.
Instead, it got orchestrated mutiny.
Now it needs to keep on the move or face the certainty it will be left behind by the pull of events.
What does this mean?
Four weeks is too long. Smart money says that by the end of this week, the IOC will announce the 2020 Games will be postponed, and most likely to 2021.
Canadian IOC member Dick Pound // Getty Images
Hours after Sunday’s IOC four-weeks announcement, the Canadian Olympic Committee said it would not send athletes to Tokyo unless the Games are postponed by one year. Shortly thereafter, the Australian Olympic Committee told its athletes to prepare for 2021.
Inside Olympic baseball, to mix metaphors and apologies for the alphabet-soup: AOC president John Coates is not only a key ally of IOC president Thomas Bach but, in this particular context, chair of the IOC’s Tokyo 2020 liaison team. You’d think a news release instructing Aussie athletes to start gearing up for 2021 would, you know, offer some instructive thinking into the IOC’s preferred postponement option, right?
Also Sunday, World Athletics, the international track and field entity formerly known as the IAAF, had called for a delay.
On Monday, in an article that caused a stir, Pound, a veteran IOC member based in Montreal, always ready with a quote, told USA Today that the Games would not start on July 24.
“On the basis of the information the IOC has, postponement has been decided,” Pound said. “The parameters going forward have not been determined, but the Games are not going to start on July 24, that much I know.”
For emphasis:
Pound is the IOC’s longest-serving member, since 1978. He is not, however, crafting policy. He does not sit on its ruling executive board. He is, as is every IOC member or, for that matter, anyone anywhere, entitled to his opinion — and, as many reporters in the Olympic space learn quickly enough, ever-open to offering his opinions, many of which are unfiltered.
But just because he says something does not make it official.
As Mark Adams, the IOC spokesman, quickly told the New York Times, “It is the right of every IOC member to interpret the decision of the IOC executive board …”
In an interview later Monday, with Canadian Press, Pound struck a far-less definitive tone. He said:
“You’re looking at a postponement. I think that’s out there now.
“We’re all reading the tea leaves and so on, but the Japanese themselves are talking about postponing. A lot of national Olympic committees and countries are calling for postponement.”
In a recognition of how fast things are moving, the president of the Japanese Olympic Committee, Yasuhiro Yamashita, a new IOC member and one of the great all-time judo champions, told reporters, “From the athletes’ point of view of safety and security, we have to come to a stage where we cannot help but consider things including postponement.”
It’s worth noting that Monday did not — repeat, not — see a deluge of other nations jumping onboard the Canada and Australia no-way 2020 procession. There are 206 national Olympic committees.
To be fair, the Swiss Olympic Committee said no to 2020. The German Olympic sports confederation said it supported “a postponement at least until next year.” And the president of the Norwegian Olympic Committee, per Reuters, said in a letter that Norway should not send athletes until the coronavirus pandemic is under control.
The Russian Olympic Committee, in a statement posted on its website, said:
“It is obvious for us that the Olympic Games should be held in the atmosphere of a true celebration of all the people. Any restrictions and threats, including of epidemiologic nature, represent a serious blow to the spirit and essence of major sports competitions and organizations.
“… Panic is the worst what can happen in the current situation. The ROC urges all the representatives of the sports community to keep Olympic calm, to act systematically and constructively while preparing for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, to make every effort to come to a consensus on the issues that are of concern to all of us in the context of the upcoming Tokyo 2020 Olympics.”
In that spirit of calm reflection, as time ticks toward the end of the week, with a postponement to 2021 now seeming inevitable, some questions:
1. Why did the IOC give itself four weeks?
Because a) Prime Minister Shinzo Abe needs a chance to save face and its “delivery partners” (IOC jargon) in Japan need the chance to regroup and b) there are indeed an incredible number of moving parts to consider.
“If it’s difficult to proceed in its complete form, then we must think about the athletes first and consider postponing,” Abe said Monday in remarks to the Japanese Parliament.
Fact: yes, public health issues are paramount.
Also, fact: the array of financial and legal issues, big and small, nonetheless have to be addressed.
As the head of the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee, Yoshiro Mori, said Monday, “What we are going to do before anything else is to start by simulating about whether we postpone one month, three months, five months, one year.
“We need to make a simulation about the various scenarios.”
2. Canada? Australia? Dick Pound making waves?
Where are the (three) U.S. IOC members in all of this? Anita DeFrantz? Kikkan Randall? David Haggerty?
Will history record that the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee exercised a leadership role — or otherwise?
Even my 25-year-old daughter, who is the farthest thing from a sports fan, understood what is what. She asked, referring to Canada and Australia: “Why didn’t the United States announce first that we were out?”