Johnny Watterson: The Olympics are in the starting blocks and it looks like a ‘go’

One thing the world has learned is that trusting science is the best way to move forward in a pandemic. Everything else is noise – and there has been plenty of that. However, to suggest that the science or the vaccine or when to begin to open up and normalise society hasn’t been politicised is not to see reality.

The Covid-19 virus has been the most politicised piece of biology since Christiian Barnard transplanted a human heart into Louis Washansky in 1967.

There has been a blizzard of colliding rights about where people can and cannot go, how they run their businesses and what they can or cannot wear on their face. On those issues there will never be agreement.

The balance lies somewhere between personal rights and jeopardy to others, and for the Olympic Games this July and August it is whether the scientific virtuosity and organisational skills invested in Tokyo can deliver an event that does not harm the local population.

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The Japanese government, the European Commission, through President Ursula von der Leyen, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) say they have the capacity to make that delivery.

“We hope Tokyo will be a place where humanity will gather with triumph against Covid,” said WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus sounding a bit IOCish. But he continued. “It is in our hands, but it is not easy. If we do our best, especially with national unity and global solidarity, I think it’s possible.”

The National Basketball Association (NBA), Professional Golf Association (PGA) and European Rugby all took on the pandemic with various degrees of success.

The NBA initially suspended in March 2020 and in June approved a plan to resume the season at Disney World, inviting the 22 teams that were within six games of a playoff spot when the season was suspended. It received a mixed reaction from players and coaches.

From the start of the resumed season in July 2020 until the end of the finals in October 2020, the NBA recorded no cases of Covid-19 for the teams participating in the bubble. The 2020-21 season was not played in a bubble. There were many cases of positive results.

Tested positive

Last week golfer John Rahm, leading the Memorial tournament, was removed because he tested positive. The PGA subsequently released a statement explaining that through 50 events since the PGA Tour’s return to golf, there had been only four positive tests (including Rahm) within competition. In March it allowed in 10,000 spectators into The Players Championship. No outcry.

In domestic rugby the season was completed but not without a number of Covid issues and players did test positive in their bubbles, including in the Irish clubs. But there were no frantic calls to have the sport suspended.

The risk factor was kept low by the behaviour of the players and officials and nobody criticised the IRFU as it tried to mitigate redundancies and a near €60 million loss.

The problem for the venal IOC is their reputation is rank stinky. External factors include the huge amounts of money at risk and a capricious Olympic movement. Ironically, if money was the motivating factor most of the athletes wouldn’t be there.

People still remember Salt Lake City 2002 and the release of the US Olympic Committee ethics panel’s probe into the bid, in which $1.2 million was paid to IOC delegates to secure their votes.

There is a Japanese election coming up and the pandemic has been used by both sides to leverage votes, incumbent prime minister Yoshihide Suga wanting to show he is a strong leader and that Japan’s national pride remains intact.

Japan is also aware the Beijing Winter Olympics are next February. What they would not do to get the summer done. There, Beijing, human rights activists are already talking of a massive boycott.

The Olympics is never without controversy, and the world rarely fails to turn the other way. This time those things are again baked into the decision-making pie, and sprinkled on top is pressing on in the face of domestic opposition.

Local hostility

Historically local hostility has rarely been an influencing factor. It is probably forgotten but two weeks prior to the Rio Olympics in 2016 nearly two out of three Brazilians polled by Datafolha pollster believed that hosting them would cause the country more harm than good.

A survey on Monday showed Japanese opposition is thawing. Half of Japan’s public now favours holding the Tokyo Olympics this summer, suggesting support for the Games is rising seven weeks before the opening ceremony.

The latest poll by the daily newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun showed 50 per cent of respondents now want the Games to be held, with 48 per cent in favour of cancellation.

That still doesn’t make it all right. Unless the science works it will be all wrong. But sometimes we fail to look at the ingenuity of that cohort of people who were able to develop an effective vaccine in less than a year compared to the four years it took for a mumps vaccine. That quality, rather than a graceless IOC and its predictable arrogance.

This can’t be another Cheltenham and the question remains how far away is far enough. But if Tokyo can be bubbled with a promised 80 per cent of participants vaccinated and without injury to the local population, let the Games begin.