Think about some of the iconic moments in recent Olympic ceremony history.
The bang of 2,008 drums, for instance, at precisely 8:08 p.m. on Aug. 8, 2008 in Beijing.
The queen of England ‘jumping’ out of the helicopter with 007 in London 2012.
Brazilian Gisele Bundchen’s catwalk down the runway at Rio 2016.
There will be no such iconic moment this July 24. There will be no moment whatsoever. For the first time in nearly 70-plus years, since the resumption of the Games after world war in the 1940s, the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics will not take place according to its every-four-years rhythm.
Instead, in a recognition of the reality of a world confronting the coronavirus pandemic, Olympic and Japanese government authorities, in a statement announced Tuesday, “concluded” that the Tokyo Games must be postponed to sometime in 2021, no later than summer of next year.
IOC president Thomas Bach // IOC/Greg Martin
What does this mean?
On the one hand, certainty of some sort — that is, that the Games aren’t going to start this July 24.
On the other — incredible uncertainty. This was the only decision the authorities could and should have taken. But, now, going forward, the many puzzles that need to be figured out, and in a compressed amount of time, promise to be extraordinarily complex.
For now, Tuesday’s announcement means athletes, coaches, national governing bodies and national Olympic committees and, most importantly, the friends and families of all those involved can focus on the most pressing matter affecting each and every one of us — well-being and safety amid the pandemic.
When — if — this crisis passes, the hope, per the IOC statement, is that the Games could “stand as a beacon of hope to the world during these troubled times,” adding the Olympic flame “could become the light at the end of the tunnel in which the world finds itself at present.”
We live in a world in which we need hope.
We also need to be real.
This is the eternal struggle.
“There are a lot of pieces in this huge and very difficult jigsaw puzzle,” president Thomas Bach was quoted in saying in remarks to wire services posted later to the IOC website. “The Olympic Games are maybe the most complex event on this planet, and getting everything together cannot be done in just a phone call between the two of us,” meaning Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Asked if this was the Olympic movement’s “worst crisis” since world war, Bach said:
“Comparisons are always dangerous because they can be interpreted in very different ways. To compare a postponement of the Games, because you are asking about the Games, with a cancellation of the war, is, I think, not the right thing to do considering the human suffering created by wars and what a war brings with it over so many years. What we can say is that it is an unprecedented crisis for humankind. We have never seen such a spread of a virus worldwide before. Therefore, it is also an unprecedented challenge for the Olympic Games. This is why, to my knowledge, this postponement of the Games is a first-ever in Olympic history.”
For a more pithy analysis, consider the remarks earlier this month to a Japanese parliamentary committee of Taro Aso, Japan’s deputy prime minister, who said that every 40 years the Games run into something bad.
1940 — canceled by war. 1980 — boycott. 2020 — pandemic.
Maybe the gentleman is onto something? There’s an old saying in many lines of work, journalism included: one is an accident, two is a coincidence, three is a trend. Aso told a parliamentary committee, and this is for real, “It’s a problem that’s happened every 40 years. It’s the cursed Olympics, and that’s a fact.”
It’s also a fact that getting to the opening ceremony next year is going to involve an incredible amount of uncertainty for institutions that historically have proven traditional and resistant to far-reaching change. This means the IOC and, in this context, the Tokyo committee.
Thus, the optimist says, an opportunity for meaningful reform.
Or, the skeptic might observe, a hot mess.
In any event, per the realist, what’s likely to happen next, over the next year and beyond, is going to cost a lot of money.
This for an event that officially was supposed to cost $7.8 billion (bid book), is now pegged at $12.6 billion (officially) and is said to be running (realistically) at $25 billion (maybe more).
How much will the final cost be?
Inquiring minds will also want to know: with Paris 2024 now looking at what would seem obvious difficulties in lining up sponsorship monies and the IOC seeking desperately to assure taxpayers, in Europe especially, that the Games can be underwritten without massive infusion of taxpayer funds — how, exactly?
If those are big-picture long-range questions, the practical questions for Tokyo 2020 (the name purportedly is going to stay the same) and for many others involved in the Olympic ecosphere are already so plentiful that David Bowie’s Changes ought to be put forward as a new theme song.
Strange fascinations fascinate me
Ah, changes are taking
The pace I'm goin' through
Right?
Consider for a moment the Tokyo 2020 experience: construction of Olympic Stadium (newly completed), witness to IOC adding five new sports (including skateboarding, surfing and climbing) and witness again, powerless, as the IOC — not its government partners — moved the signature marathons to northern Sapporo out of concerns relating to the Tokyo summer heat.
The IOC added sports. Isn’t that reflective of change? Yes. But it didn’t significantly cut back enough elsewhere and the Tokyo Games now are looking at 11,000-plus athletes and 339 medal events. That’s — ginormous.
Now it has a year to figure out how to make that happen. Keep in mind: 11k and 339 are just the starting numbers.
And, oh, hey, by the way, we don’t exactly know yet when the Games are gonna be. Sometime next year. The village, the 10 or so temporary facilities, the thousands of hotel rooms, the convention space ... yeah, next year, sometime. We’ll get back to you.
When next year would work? Unclear, uncertain, don’t know, like we said — we’ll get back to you. Just off the top of our heads, we have to think about, um, 2021 schedules for the NBA, tennis, golf, men’s and women’s soccer in Europe, the World University Games, the World Games, world championships in swimming and track. Gymnastics, too, though that’s typically in the fall.
So — swimming and track.
Track and field aficionados were quick to suggest that the track championships, set for August 2021 at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon, could be moved to 2022. Then you could have this lineup for the sport: 2021 Olympics, 2022 worlds in Oregon, 2023 worlds in Budapest, 2024 Games in Paris, 2025 worlds somewhere (not decided yet).
World Athletics, formerly the IAAF, issued a statement Tuesday that said, at the end, discussions are underway “to ensure that Oregon is able to host the World Athletics Championships on alternative dates, including dates in 2022.”
Couldn’t be more of a direct hint than that. Duh.
Swim (technically, aquatics)?
The 2021 swim worlds are in Fukuoka, Japan, in July, and FINA executive director Cornel Marculescu, asked by Associated Press if the federation was willing to move to 2022, said no. A lot.
“No, no, no, no, no, no,” he said, adding, “If they do it in summer, then we (will have to change) the dates (of the FINA worlds). If they do it at the beginning of the year, maybe we don’t need to touch the dates. The only thing we do, we wait to see what is the IOC decision.”
Keep in mind that while the swim worlds are a big deal we have to be real. For USA Swimming — more so the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee — the goal is Olympic medals. Michael Phelps won seven gold medals at the Melbourne 2007 swim worlds but pretty much only swim geeks remember that; everyone knows Phelps won eight golds at Beijing in 2008. A U.S. swim Trials typically is a month before a Games. Wouldn’t that suggest a FINA worlds in the fall? How’s that gonna happen? (Read: who’s gonna pay for that change?)
And on and on.
What about the Tokyo 2020 committee itself? Its office space? Rent? Keeping venues going for another year? Who’s gonna pay for test events?
Moving on: Airfares? Training camps?
Later in his interview with the wire services, Bach amended his analysis. This time, he did not qualify his observation — no “maybe the most complex” — but flat-out said what they really are: “The Olympic Games is the most complex event in the world.”
Absolutely, positively, unequivocally: postponing the Olympics is the right call. As Bach also said: “The principle and the criterion are to safeguard the health of the athletes and everybody involved and to contribute to the containment of the virus. Every other particular interest of anybody else should come after that. This is about human lives and the health of human beings.”
But changing what is, indeed, the world’s most complicated event is going to prove all the more super-complicated. And it’s going to cost a lot of money.
And with that money is going to come — eventually, as certain as day follows night — a reckoning.
When?
Like many things in our world in March 2020, that, too, is yet uncertain.