Tokyo: Japan’s media and athletes reacted with disappointment Wednesday to the postponement of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, but expressed relief the Games had not been cancelled altogether over the coronavirus pandemic.
The postponement, unprecedented in peacetime, came after heavy pressure from athletes around the world and followed an admission from Japan’s prime minister that a delay was now ‘inevitable’.
But there was still shock and disappointment in Japan, where the Games have been promoted as the ‘Recovery Olympics’, intended to showcase reconstruction after the devastating 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster.
Athletes in Japan said they were disappointed, but committed to training towards the rescheduled Games.
“Honestly speaking, my mind is still spinning,” sports climber Akiyo Noguchi wrote in a post on her Instagram page.
“But I’m taking it positively since I’ll be able to spend more time doing the sport I love,” added Noguchi, who plans to make the Tokyo Games her last Olympics.
“I will spend the time I have been given to be stronger both physically and mentally,” she added. “For now, I hope the world will overcome this situation as soon as possible, and that the Olympics will be held in Tokyo.”
‘Best scenario’
Jun Mizutani, the 30-year-old Japanese table tennis player who competed at the Beijing, London and Rio Games, reacted lightheartedly to the news, tweeting a digitally aged photo of himself with the message: ‘I can do it’.
Athletes and sports associations around the world had pushed for the move given the effects the virus has had on everything from qualifiers to training, so the final decision was far from a shock.
“We were ready as the mood for postponement was growing,” Toshihisa Tsuchihashi of the Japan Tennis Association told the Nikkan sports daily.
“I think it’s a wise decision. I guess players will have mixed feelings, but I believe they will reset and do their best. I’ll support them.” And Ichiro Hoshino, a senior director of the Japan Table Tennis Association, told the daily it had become clear that holding the Games this summer was impossible.
“But I also feel that it was good that it was not cancelled amid this serious situation,” he said.
“I’d say it will be good for athletes as (the situation) has become a little more predictable.” Both the IOC and Japanese organisers and officials have insisted that cancellation is not on the table, with the goal now to hold the rescheduled Games by summer 2021 at the latest.
Under the circumstances, wrote the conservative Sankei Shimbun daily, the decision of a one-year postponement was ‘the best scenario’.
The United States athletes welcomed the decision to postpone the Tokyo Olympics Tuesday, exhaling a collective sigh of relief tinged with disappointment as they began to set their sights on 2021.
The deadly coronavirus pandemic has swept into all 50 states of America, leaving US athletes’ years of carefully choreographed Olympic training plans in tatters.
Powerhouse swimmer Katie Ledecky, expected to be one of the stars of the Tokyo Games, had been left without a pool to train in as restrictions in California shut down the Stanford University facilities.
Track and field star Noah Lyles — the reigning 200m world champion — had been denied regular access to a running track. Instead Lyles, who suffers from allergies and asthma, had been forced to train in a Florida park.
Lyles and Ledecky’s problems had become all too common for US athletes, who found themselves torn between the need to comply with local regulations restricting non-essential movement while simultaneously sticking to training regimens designed to help them prepare for Tokyo.
Lyles had no reservations about the decision to postpone the Games — and vowed to be ready for Tokyo in 2021.
‘Safety first’
“Straight up I’m tired of hearing I’m sorry like my puppy just died,” Lyles wrote on Twitter. “We will overcome this like everything else and then go win the Gold in 2021!”
US sprint star Allyson Felix, whose six Olympic golds are the most for any female track and field athlete, said the delay won’t halt her bid for a last share of Games glory.
“I am not sure what the future holds, but my goals have not changed,” she wrote in an article posted on Time.com.
“I still hope to experience the feeling of standing on that podium in 2021 and I hope my journey to try to get back there will inspire you to keep moving forward.”
In a later interview with NBC, Lyles said the safety of athletes was paramount.
“The last thing we want is for anybody to get sick,” Lyles told NBC.
“I can train for another year, but if the whole world goes through a crisis and everybody gets sick, we won’t have an Olympics at all.”
Lyles had already achieved a qualifying standard to compete in Tokyo. But the 22-year-old believes many athletes would have missed out through not being able to train properly had the games gone ahead.
“It would have been very hard for a lot of us to even get a qualifying time,” he said.
Ledecky described an increasingly fraught hunt for facilities after her regular training pool at Stanford was closed.
She went seven days without putting a toe in the water, and finally swam over the weekend in a private pool in someone’s backyard.
“At certain points there were times we didn’t know if cancellation was still on the table or if there could be a postponement until the end of this year or some other time,” she told The Washington Post. “It’s good to have clarity now.
‘Sneaking around’
Ledecky’s US swimming teammate Nathan Adrian spoke of mixed emotions after learning of the postponement.
“Disappointment, obviously, because we’d be training for four years…but then the other side of the coin is relief,” said Adrian, 31, who had been targeting a fourth Olympic Games appearance.
Adrian, who underwent surgery for testicular cancer last year, is from Washington state, the initial epicenter of the COVID-19 crisis in the US.
“My parents are still up there along with my brother and sister. And my parents are in the risk category. I feel guilty if I’m trying to go out and train, sneaking around trying to find a gray area that allows me to get into a pool or lift some weights,” he told NBC.
Other athletes took a defiant stance, immediately turning their attention to a Tokyo Olympics sometime in 2021.
“We train hard. We put our blood, sweat and tears into this,” said Emma Coburn, the 2017 women’s steeplechase world champion. “Our dreams are not cancelled, they are just postponed.”
Rai Benjamin, the 400m hurdles silver medalist at last year’s World Championships, acknowledged disappointment in a social media post.
“This was THE year. The work, the sacrifice, the determination, but I understand,” Benjamin wrote. “Everyone stay safe and Tokyo we’ll see you soon.”
Agencies
