Special Report: The Difficulty Surrounding Tokyo 2020 And The Olympic Games In The Viral Age

Michael Pirrie evaluates how the coronavirus pandemic is affecting the IOC’s decision-making as they look to provide a safe and successful Olympics in Tokyo later this year.

The Olympic Games can occur at critical junctures in world history and in the history of host cities and international community.

One such moment occurred at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympic Games, delivered safely and peacefully on the highly nuclearized, divided and dangerous Korean peninsula.

We have now reached another flashpoint in modern global society and sport as preparations continue for the Tokyo Games in the face of a new modern plague.

It takes longer to plan and stage the Olympic Games than it does to build a space shuttle, and any decision to cancel an Olympic mission already parked on the launching pad and almost ready for take off would be unprecedented, and made only if there was a threat to the safety of athletes.

While political boycotts depleted the Moscow and Los Angeles Games, Tokyo could face medical boycotts in the new viral age for sport.

The global anticipation that surrounds the final countdown to the Olympic Games has been replaced by an atmosphere of fear and trepidation in the final stages of the journey to Japan.

While a sense of danger was present when the Olympic movement landed in Rio with the Zika virus, polluted air posed a visible danger in Beijing.

OLYMPIC SPORT GOES VIRAL

The invisible coronavirus however has raised doubts about whether air conditions in Japan, and across the planet, can safely support and sustain sporting activity and events.

A great silence has descended over the sporting world, its premier events, codes and stadiums.

The pandemic has already forced the suspension of entire seasons and elite sporting leagues and competitions, and forced games behind closed doors without a crowded house in sight.

The Olympic Games in Tokyo is the only major international sporting event and occasion still standing.

From my previous experience working with Olympic Games organising committees, I vividly remember the final months of preparations are always the most anxious and intense, concealed beneath a mask of calmness and confidence, which we would sometimes call ‘The Olympic Look.

This anxiety is driven by a deep fear of failure that after vast investments of time, money and painstaking planning the Olympic project could still collapse due to unforeseen circumstances.

The global anticipation that surrounds the final countdown to the Olympic Games has been replaced by an atmosphere of fear and trepidation in the final stages of the journey to Japan.

This is the deep fear that Tokyo Olympic organisers are now experiencing but in ways unlike any previous Games committee.

The enormous fear of failure that drives Olympic committees, like athletes and Opening Ceremony directors, has been heightened by the escalating toll of death and disease and doubts about the future of the Games.

While political boycotts depleted the Moscow and Los Angeles Games, Tokyo could face medical boycotts in the new viral age for sport.

SURVIVING THE GAMES  

The worst ailments that athletes have suffered at previous Games include injured pride, loss of future funding, positive doping samples, food poisoning, cultural disorientation, missed flights home, and fake hold ups.

Corona has made competition a matter of  life or potential death.

The mask of calm and confidence projected by Olympic committees has been replaced by protective surgical masks, gloves, and gowns as special sanitisation squads attempt to corona proof Tokyo’s Games venues and other key locations.

The virus has already put almost everything on hold in societies around the world, from local markets to the release of the new James Bond movie entitled ‘No Time to Die’ : art imitating life perhaps live never before.

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE

While filming of the latest Mission Impossible franchise in Venice was also halted, Tokyo has become the new location for a real life mission impossible in the battle to protect the world’s best athletes from an invisible killer virus that threatens the Games.

The MI reality drama involves many background locations across the world, and includes numerous laboratories in a vaccine race against time that is more intense than any event on the Olympic competition schedule.

The cast and crew includes some of the biggest players in the media, corporate, retail and technology worlds and some of the finest medical minds as well as a coalition of national and international leaders.

While major gatherings have become the new ground zero in the battle to contain spread of the virus, the prospect of staging the Games in a world full of empty public spaces and deserted communities resembling ghost towns from a Cormac McCarthy post apocalyptic novel might seem implausible if not impossible.

The nation has united around the Olympic Games as a symbol of Japan’s recovery and resilience following the devastating 2011 earthquake tsunami.

No other sporting event or world governing body has access to the global resources available to the Olympic Games, IOC and worldwide Olympic movement of nations and territories.

And few countries have Tokyo’s penchant for technology and perfection. Nor its capacity to endure -characteristics essential to the Games in the viral age.

Tokyo is wearing its determined look.

The quest to stage the Tokyo Games has become a national priority for Japan in its search for a project of geopolitical, cultural and economic significance for the nation at home and on the world stage.

Japan often expresses itself through sport in times of hardship.

OLYMPIC LIFE-LINE

The nation has united around the Olympic Games as a symbol of Japan’s recovery and resilience following the devastating 2011 earthquake tsunami.

Indeed, within a few months of the 2011 tsunami, Japan’s national women’s football team won the women’s world cup football final defeating super power USA, against all odds, on penalty kicks.

Reflecting on her team’s epic win and the impact of the earthquake, the team’s best players Homare Sawa, said: “We were exhausted, but we kept running…Japan has been hurt, and so many lives have been affected,” she said.

“We cannot change that. But Japan is coming back, and this was our chance to represent our nation.”

That same determination is driving Japan’s effort to stage the Tokyo Games, against almost all odds, again.

While the Olympics has provided a financial and political lifeline for the Abe government, Japan can’t be seen to be putting the nation’s significant national investment in the Olympics ahead of global health or its own citizens, especially the vulnerable elderly.

Despite the enormous challenges, there are fundamental concerns about the finality of cancelling the Games when the assessment of risk involved can be misunderstood and vary significantly in the earliest phases of a new pandemic, like corona.

The temporary halt to league or club competitions for players who compete on a weekly basis in careers that span several seasons is vastly different to the loss suffered by Olympians for whom the four year Games cycle can be a once-in-a-lifetime occasion and opportunity, after spending many years to just to get to the Games.

Reading and anticipating the world’s mood on the Games proceeding amidst a global health crisis will be critical to final decisions about the Games.

While the Olympic Games unites and almost stops the world for two weeks in a global celebration of sport and culture, the virus will stop societies for much longer, and any perception that Games events could endanger the fight against the pandemic could divide rather than unite the planet.

While the virus can’t be stopped, experts believe it can be defeated by taking relevant precautions when necessary.

Elite athletes already exist in a virtual medical and health bubble and are in the lowest at risk groups. The risks inherent in Olympic sport pose are far greater for elite athletes than catching the virus.

Tokyo ironically, would probably be one of the safest cities from the virus if the Games go ahead.

Mass pandemic cleaning, disinfection, biosecurity and sanitising programs would be implemented across the city and Games locations designed to eradicate traces of viral particles from all Games surfaces and structures that athletes and others are likely to come into contact with.

A small group of nations, including Australia, is playing an important rehearsal role for the Games as Tokyo’s off Broadway, staging spectator free performances of major sporting events, which are breaking television ratings records and proving there is a huge market and demand for crowd free elite sport.

These successes give hope and confidence to Olympic organisers that global audiences will tune into elite sport when it is available in new formats.

Importantly, there have been no cases reported so far of corona inflections amongst the players involved or in the communities surrounding the venues.

These successes give hope and confidence to Olympic organisers that global audiences will tune into elite sport when it is available in new formats.

Predicting and protecting the future of the world’s health, the athletes, Japanese society and these Tokyo Olympic Games from the coronavirus will require 2020 vision and the wisdom of Solomon in the anxious days and weeks ahead for the IOC, Games organisers and the international community.

While the world’s air may be dangerous in certain environments, Games organisers will be looking at unprecedented measures to insulate and isolate athletes from possible transmission with the latest and most comprehensive air and environment protection systems, creating a protective bubble around competitors.

This could include an expansion of  ‘clean-to-clean’ venues from previous Games, used to facilitate the movement of athletes through secure, barrier free pathways established in Games locations, connected also to transport and accommodation.

Staging the Games safely in the current global climate would be an unprecedented victory over the fear that has gripped the world and provided new ways of combatting the virus that can adapted to new settings for greater worldwide protection.

The Games would be a stunning demonstration of global cooperation in a time of growing social anarchy, with the elderly and disabled being neglected and treated in some communities as modern day lepers who have been left behind.

World leaders and scientists say we will rise above this new pandemic of fear and disease. The Olympic Games and the athletes could lead this rise.

Michael Pirrie is an international communications adviser and commentator. Michael led the global media campaign for the London 2012 Olympic Games bid and was executive adviser to the London Games chairman, Seb Coe. Michael liaised with the IOC Executive Office on planning for the Co-ordination Commission meetings, the high level strategic and technical planning committee overseeing preparations for the Olympic Games.