Tokyo 2020: ‘The right decision, made just in time’

Olympics and Paralympics have taken place in financial crises, after terrorist atrocities, with governments in meltdown. They have been able to march on regardless because of the corporate money behind them but also the enduring purity of their central appeal: that they will bring the young people of the world together, and they will bring their families and friends and compatriots along with them for the ride.

Only when it became clear that there could be no gathering of the brightest and the best did the Olympic machine creak to a halt. When half the globe is under curfew in their own homes the idea of a vast assembly of athletes and spectators no longer makes any sense. The world has changed and so must the Olympics too.

You can’t wait another four weeks to see where the coronavirus pandemic is, because every day matters to the athletes at this stage. A pole-vaulter cannot prepare for an Olympics with star-jumps in the back garden. A rowing eight cannot train independently in their garages. Boxers need sparring partners, tennis players need opponents.

All of them need coaches, and medical staff, and proper nutrition. They need tracks, and gyms, and velodromes. They need swimming pools, open roads and changing rooms.

They need Olympic selection races, and bouts, and contests. They need to be watched by judges and dope-tested by officials. There must be a crowd to watch so all the effort and strain and practice makes some sort of sense, and there must be broadcasters and writers and cameraman and press officers so any else can hear about it all.

It is not a cheap decision to push the biggest gathering in sport back a year. Olympic and Paralympic Games bring something special to every host city but they come at an eye-watering price. Those costs escalate rapidly when finished stadiums are operating but empty, when contracts to make transport work and security function and logistics take place have to be extended months after they were designed to end.

It has a seismic effect on the athletes who have spent almost four years building to one three-week period in midsummer. Not all will be able to peak again next year. Some will be too old, others injured.

Lives are structured around Olympic years. Families are put on hold. Babies are delayed. Weddings and engagements are forced to wait for the autumn or the empty winter beyond.

And they dictate how you pay the bills. Even in the UK National Lottery funding only touches a select group.

When you exist on prize money and appearance fees, the obliteration of your year’s competition schedule is about more than just racing. When you supplement that with speaking engagements and school visits, the greatest squeeze on private finances in a generation and the part-closure of the education system has a direct effect on your ability to compete.

This is not an existential crisis like the African boycott of 1976, the US-led boycott of Moscow in 1980 or the tit-for-tat Eastern Bloc boycott of the Los Angeles Olympics four years later.

The Olympics as an idea retains its allure. There are no breakaways or rival circuits coming. Japan has the finances to keep this vast operation going for another 12 months in a way that would have been beyond the Brazilian government four years ago and certainly the Greek government in 2004 and its aftermath.

It may even, perversely, be the making of the Tokyo Games.