BREAKING: For the first time since 1944 the Olympic Games Opening Ceremony will not go on as scheduled
The conclusion that everyone knew was coming played out to completion with the Olympics being moved from July-August 2020
It started with a flurry of statements from athletes, International Federations, and National Olympic Committees.
It proceeded with a communique outlining intentions to seek postponement.
Then speculation from senior IOC members made its way out, leading to reports saying the inevitable had arrived.
Finally, a conference call between governments and the IOC sealed the deal: the 2020 Olympics will not be held in July-August, 2020.
This was not a surprise.
Olympic insiders were quick to remind people, including the journalist who runs this newsletter, that there is no way this decision had been made in the last fortnight and had been on the table for quite some time. Negotiations, especially needed for an event with such a large scale as the Olympics were finely crafted affairs. Partners needed to be brought along. Proper protocol needed to be adhered to. In the end, we got where we needed to be.
Athletes, for their part felt, vindicated. One of their own in the IOC stood up to the party line and demanded alternate dates be shored up so that athletes could feel protected and not put themselves at risk while training for the Games. Others used their ever-growing voices in mostly Western media outlets to decry the administrators in charge and gain some semblance of power over the operation which uses them for profit and they ply their trades of glory within.
Government, got its say in the name of the Games (still Tokyo 2020 according to Yuriko Koike) and the chance to speak on a coordinated phone call providing the final impetus to officially announce the change in the Games. Government even got top billing in the IOC-Tokyo 2020 joint statement, where it took until paragraph six to announce a delay in the Games.
For Tokyo 2020, this represented a blow and a year of additional uncertainties after six and a half years of uncertainties created right after Tokyo was awarded the Games in Buenos Aires. You see, it was one year after Tokyo won the Games that the IOC announced reforms that allowed the plan for the Games to constantly evolve and change from the bid document. This happens in every Olympics, but Tokyo 2020 moved more and more events outside the city, completely redid its Olympic Stadium (which was only just completed late last year), was compelled to add five new sports in 2016, and had its marathon abruptly changed by the IOC not its government partners. Meanwhile, it dealt with a political change in the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, which brought nothing but added questions about the Games’ public budget which at one point had to be cut down so it did not sprawl above $13 billion.
That price tag will likely change given the contracts needed to be rewritten, which was one of the main sticking points that dragged this process out.
The Olympics are not designed to be flexible. They are designed to bring as many athletes from around the world to one event over the course of two weeks, and the administrators who run it have figured out how to make a massive profit off this to fund a sprawling sport enterprise based on four years cycles that are meticulously planned and don’t offer space for much disruption.
Being caught between private enterprise and public governance put the Olympics in an awkward spot as the world was consumed by a pandemic it had not seen in 100 years. Administrators not wanting to cancel the meticulously planned event fell back on the luxury of time, as they were not in charge of the public response to the virus around the world. It was a fair response and one any private enterprise would take.
Meanwhile, COVID-19 started as a pneumonia-like disease that appeared to threaten local events in China in January to one that is on every continent with every country on earth attempting different measures to contain the fallout to prevent a global catastrophe.
After COVID-19 began to spread the IOC and the Olympics could only bank on the world to get everyone through the crisis for its event to go on as planned. And bank the IOC did, publicly.
The crisis was not contained. Governments that acted early, albeit in different ways, were successfully able to “flatten the curve,” and reduce the peak deaths and number of patients in emergency care were able to contain COVID-19, but not lessen its impact over time. Flattening the curve elongates it. Governments will need long-term planning to oversee the end of the pandemic and prevent a second spike in cases and deaths, which occurred in the 1918-19 flu pandemic.
Once we have a COVID-19 vaccine and a handle on this pandemic, the world we inhabit will not be the world where we were living before the outbreak spread from China.
Our economies were not prepared for an event like this, our governments were not aligned with public health officials, and our priorities will likely shift permanently. This is not to say we will not get through it. Humanity will. A disease like this will not wipe out the species.
How long this will take to overcome is a question that many don’t have the answer for right now. It truly depends on our collective action and collaboration in working to prevent transmission of this disease in any way possible.
The 2020(1) Olympics are already positioning themselves as a light at the end of a dark tunnel. For many they assuredly will be, especially those that work and live within this system. They have created this environment and need it for survival. Their points are understandable.
Perhaps, though, this time could be used to rethink the system in place. Promises of reform ultimately led to a paralysis of inaction at the first hint of a global calamity. An event designed to unite the world could only depend on the world united to save it, and that test assuredly was a failure.
I cannot pretend to have any of the answers to the grand scheme that has been unmoored by COVID-19. If I did, I likely would be working within the system rather than trying to hold it to account from the outside. It is the job of those who work within it to answer the questions that their peers face trying to decide when the 2020 Olympics will ultimately take place, who will get to participate, and what comes out of it.
In the run-up there was one thing clear: we all were not working in a system with flexibility to protect as many people as possible amid a global calamity. When the tsunami hit, there was no sea wall to try and stop its most powerful force. It has swept us all aside and we will need to truly rebuild.
Tokyo 2020 promised to be the reconstruction Olympics. What remains to be seen is if it can ever truly live up to that title in our new global reality.
About 90 minutes after the flurry of BREAKING NEWS media announcements, I finally got a notice about Tokyo 2020’s postponement from the organizing committee’s official LINE channel.
LINE is a messaging app that is popular in Japan, and the announcements from Tokyo 2020 are in Japanese. I use it as a way to keep practicing my Japanese before trying to go to the 2020 Games. For the last few weeks it has been peppering me with exciting messages about the upcoming Torch Relay. They usually come with videos and large animated pictures.
This one was short and a major departure from the “ra-ra” posts trying to drive excitement for the Olympics. It was also incredibly formally written for a mobile text. It said (in my own rough translation):
“東京2020大会の実施に向けて、関係機関と一体となり、遅くとも2021年夏までの実施に向け、検討してまいります。”
“We will work together with the related organizations so the Tokyo 2020 Games come by the end of Summer 2021.”