Bulls & Bears: Ayres and Ryan give hockey a lift; Tokyo Olympics stressing over virus
Credit to Author: Gord Kurenoff| Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2020 22:20:45 +0000
One is a 42-year-old Zamboni driver who became an international celebrity — at least within the hockey world — for backstopping the Carolina Hurricanes to a 6-3 victory over his hometown Toronto Maple Leafs on the stage that is Hockey Night in Canada last Saturday.
The other is a veteran NHL star who is coming off of 100 days of sobriety in a tough battle against alcoholism.
Yet there were no bigger winners in sport this week than emergency backup goaltender David Ayres and Ottawa Senator Bobby Ryan.
Ayres has become a veritable hockey folk hero for his “aw shucks” attitude around being pressed into service when both of Carolina’s goaltenders — James Reimer and Peter Mrazek — were injured Saturday.
His payoff? The stick he used against the Leafs is now in the Hockey Hall of Fame and his media tour gave the NHL more exposure in the United States than most Stanley Cup Finals.
And Ryan deserves considerable credit for his story of adversity and redemption — that redemption being a hat trick in his first game back Thursday as the Senators burned the Vancouver Canucks 5-2 at the Canadian Tire Centre.
It has been a stressful, bearish week for organizers of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
Even just the uncertainty caused by the threat of a potential postponement of the world’s largest sporting event — scheduled for this summer — is enough to throw the typical clockwork of Japanese efficiency completely out of whack.
Yet that is what Tokyo — and the world — is facing given the serious spread of the coronavirus at ground zero in Wuhan, across China, throughout Asia and now in an increasingly large number of countries around the world.
Containment is Job 1 for governments and health agencies all over the planet and the obvious risk of bringing together hundreds of thousands of tourists in close quarters for an Olympic Games might be too much for world leaders.
The lawyers at the International Olympic Committee, including longtime leader and influencer Dick Pound of Montreal, certainly see red when it comes to risk management around COVID-19.
So do the actuaries and accountants of the insurance companies holding policies on Tokyo 2020. A postponement itself would easily represent a claim of several billion dollars. An outright cancellation would be unfathomable given the US$12.6-billion budget of the Tokyo organizing committee itself.
It is not hyperbole to suggest that depending on the outcome, the Tokyo Games could represent the single largest insurance claim in history.
In the meantime, the bearish impact of the coronavirus on other streams of sport business will be a constant news thread through the balance of the winter and into the spring. Watch for more of what happened Thursday in Italy when Inter Milan and Ludogorets Razgrad of Bulgaria played their Europa League match before an empty stadium.
Closed door matches may become the new norm, especially in countries hit by outbreaks. In other cases, such as the top two divisions of Swiss soccer and Six Nations Rugby in Italy, matches have been postponed indefinitely.
It’s safe to say the postponement of the Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai on April 19 will be a benchmark for other sports considering their options for the spring and summer.
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