To cancel or not to cancel the 2020 Tokyo Olympics
Credit to Author: Eddie G. Alinea| Date: Sat, 29 Feb 2020 17:02:11 +0000
From the time Frenchman Pierre Coubertin revived the Summer Games in 1896, the Games of the Olympiad were canceled only three times.
The Sixth Games of the Olympiad in 1916 was scheduled in Berlin but didn’t pursue due to the outbreak of World War 1, while the 12th in Tokyo in 1940 and the 13th in 1944 in London were canceled, too, because of World War 2.
With barely five months ahead of this year’s 32nd edition also in Tokyo, the Games is again being threatened of not being launched, not anymore because of politics, but because of the Coronavirus epidemic now called Covid-19.
No less than Canadian Dick Pound, the longest-serving member of the International Olympic Committee, had, earlier this week, expressed alarm over the fate of the Games to be held for the third time in Asia even as he gave the Games organizers a three-month window to decide on what to do.
Pound did not speak of outright cancellation, but hinted it could go as far as that if the disease goes unabated until late May or two months before the games open on July 24.
“You could certainly go to two months out if you had to,” Pound said, as quoted by the Associated Press. which would mean coming up with a decision within that frame, hoping the virus will be under control by that time. And if things got to the point of not going ahead, “you’re probably looking at a cancellation.”
As of last Tuesday, China reported 508 new cases and another 71 deaths, 68 of them in the central city of Wuhan, where the epidemic originated last December.
As of Friday, a total of 77,658 cases were registered in mainland China alone with 2,663 deaths. South Korea now has the second-highest with 977 in the world with 10 deaths. Records show the illness had spread to as the Middle East and Europe. This could signal a new stage in the spread of the virus with four deaths reported in Japan.
Pound, saying: “As far as we all know you’re going to be in Tokyo,” encouraged the athletes, though, to keep on training.
Besides being canceled thrice on during the wars, the modern Olympics had and faced boycotts in 1976 in Montreal, in 1980 in Moscow and 1984 in Los Angeles.
The Montreal Games in 1976 turned out to be the most expensive ever with $100 million worth of security forces augmented the safety of participants. The Taiwanese boycotted because Canada would not recognize their country as the Republic of China.
Twenty nations, mainly from Africa withdrew from competitions, refusing to share the Olympic stage with New Zealand because the latter’s rugby team had toured South Africa.
But like before, the athletes were brilliant. The Americans took back the basketball crown denied them by the Soviets in 1972 in Munich, while boxing teammates, including the Spinks brothers Michael and Leon and “Sugar’ Ray Leonard pummeled the opposition.
Bruce Jenner breezed through the 10-event decathlon plum, while Edwin Moses Moses had the 400-meter hurdles safe in his hands. Cuba’s “El Caballo” Albeto Juantorena swept the 400 and 800-meter dashes, while East Germany’s Kornelia Ender and USA’s John Naber each lapped up four golds, to mention only a few top performers.
Since its re-entry into the Olympics in 1952, the USSR emerged as a sports power in 1980 by hosting the Games in Moscow that year amid boycott of the US and dozens of non-communist countries — including Japan, West Germany and the Philippines.
USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, half of the expected to compete opted out, the Eastern Bloc powerhouses Soviets and East Germany took 50 percent of the medals. Cuban Teofilo Stevensosn took his third consecutive boxing title and Great Britain raised its Olympic profile when Sebastian Coe stormed first to the finish in 1,500 meters. Steve Ovett claimed the gold in the 800-meter race.
Four years later in 1984 in Los Angeles, it was the Soviets’ turn to shun the Games along with other 16 allies. Libya also dropped out after two Libyan journalists were barred from entering the US shore.
But athletes from 140 other nations took part in a pageant-filled Games marked by high Hollywood production values, copious commercial sponsorship and a touch of scandal when 11 athletes flunked their drug tests.
The host country’s Carl Lewis matched Jesse Owen’s four gold sweep and screetched to the finish line in the 100-metrer sprint eight feet ahead of nearest pursuer. Hurdler Edwin Moses ruled the 400-metder, his second gold in as many Games and Portugal’s Carlos Lopez left marathon rivals in dust easily clinching the gold despite the fact that he had been struck by a car while training 15 days before.
Gymnast Mary Lou Retton, under 4-feet, 9 inches tall, turned into a towering performer, capturing the all-around crown beating Romania’s balletic Ecaterina Szabo Peerless diver Greg Louganis soared past his rivals for golds in both platform and springboard competitions.
Another highlight of the 1976 Games was American favorite Mary Deckeer and Great Britain’s barefoot Zola Budd collided painfully on the track , allowing Romania’s Maricica Puica to breeze by them for the gold in the women’s 3,000-meter race.