The list of Canadian Olympic athletes that will be affected by what appears certain to be a postponement of the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo is long, their biographies varied.
You have elite athletes struggling to keep their window open for another year and youngsters fighting to push their way through.
In the bigger picture, the 2020 Games were positioned to be a memorable sports moment for Canada, with the Olympic team likely to be the country’s largest contingent of athletes ever thanks in part to a record nine team-sport entries having already qualified, with more on the cusp.
But if we’re going to pour one out for our Olympians who have had dreams delayed with the news the Canadian Olympic Committee wasn’t going to send a team to Japan even if the International Olympic Committee was determined to plow ahead – although it now appears that even the IOC has seen the light and is thought to be working on a plan to postpone already — can we save a little extra for the Canadian basketball contingent?
What was looking like a summer like no other is now inevitably and sensibly being overtaken by far greater concerns as sports bodies and governments grapple with the fallout from COVID-19, the pandemic that has brought the world largely to its knees for the moment.
“We don’t know when it will be safe to be in a community again, physically, and when that happens we’ll get going again,” said Canada Basketball chief executive officer Glen Grunwald. “Things are changing on a daily basis, we just have to be prepared for however the situation unfolds and do what’s right.”
The timing is tough, there is no denying it.
On both the men’s and women’s side there seemed to be the possibility of a real breakthrough for Canada in what is the glamour event among team sports at the Summer Games.
It has been so long coming.
The Canadian women’s team, which has been marching steadily up the hill since winning a last-chance qualifying to crack the field in London in 2012, seemed to be peaking, coming off quarter-finals appearances during the last two Olympics.
Over the years the team has kept replenishing itself under head coach Lisa Thomaidis, somehow getting younger and more experienced at the same time while adding length and athleticism.
They punched their ticket to Japan by going 3-0 against top competition in Belgium in February and were rolling into Tokyo ranked fourth in the world – the best ever for a Canadian team in any sport other than hockey. A podium finish was in the plan.
On the men’s side things were a little more uncertain – Canada would have had to win its Olympic qualifying tournament in Victoria in June – but the hopes were just as high and arguably equally as justified.
After one Olympic appearance in 32 years and none in 20 years – even as basketball was gaining more and more traction across the country and Canadians were making a bigger name for themselves in the NBA – this was supposed to be the year everything came together.
Lacking a large swath of their 20-plus pool of NBA players, Canada fell short of qualifying for the Olympics at the World Cup in China last year but from that disappointment came a great opportunity.
Community support rallied to fund a successful Canadian bid to host the Olympic Qualifying Tournament in Victoria, a six-team event Canada would have to win to advance to Tokyo.
The prospect of playing at home and the lure of the Olympics seemed to resonate.
One by one Canada’s NBA players committed months in advance, with national team general manager Rowan Barrett nudging, beginning with Jamal Murray of the Denver Nuggets and including the likes of emerging star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander of the Oklahoma City Thunder, third-year wing Dillon Brooks of the Memphis Grizzlies and on down the line.
Optimism was growing that Andrew Wiggins of the Golden State Warriors was waiting until the end of the NBA season to state his plan to play.
Meanwhile, fans were making plans to be in Victoria in force with organizers predicting a sellout. Hotels were tight as CanBall junkies were building summer plans around watching the most important international basketball played in Canada since the 1994 FIBA World Cup.
It doesn’t take much imagination to picture a who’s who of Canadian basketball, past and present, gathering for a coming out party.
It’s all up in the air now. Shortly after the COC made its decision to not send athletes to Tokyo, Canada Basketball came out in support of the move, even as FIBA gently urged the IOC to postpone the games.
With momentum building towards a postponement it’s a matter of when, not if, the final decision is made on the OQT.
“We’re just waiting for the dominoes to fall,” said Grunwald. “The tournament itself is based upon the Olympics and we’re waiting on the Olympics to make their decision. I’m still very hopeful that we’ll host it here in Canada in Victoria, but the timing of it is obviously up in the air. There’s nothing more to say about it than that.”
Grunwald is confident that if the Games are postponed to 2021, Victoria can still be a viable host for the OQT event although there are too many variables in play to go much further than that.
“The spirit of this has been wonderful,” said Grunwald. “The folks in Victoria aren’t doing it for any other reason than to help their community build a basketball legacy there and help Canada qualify for the Olympics.
“They’re sticking with us and we remain hopeful that it’s all going to happen, that the Olympics will figure out the right time to hold it and it will be a great experience for everyone.”
The delay could create other wrinkles. Is Raptors head coach Nick Nurse under contract to coach the national team through 2020 or through the Olympics, which now could be in 2021? And could the disruption to the NBA season crowd the 2020-21 season – there has been talk of a Christmas-to-August season next year to accommodate a late finish to the suspended 2019-2020 campaign — to the point where he might not be available for an early summer qualifying event?
Again, more unknowns, but Grunwald seemed less concerned on that front.
“I think Nick still wants to coach the team and we want him to coach the team,” he said. “It’s just a matter of the timelines and all that stuff, I don’t see any issues there.”
If there is a positive it’s that Canada’s pool of players could be even deeper. Contract issues that made veterans Tristan Thompson and Kelly Olynyk doubtful for playing in the qualifying tournament this summer should be resolved by 2021 and Dwight Powell should be healthy after a season-ending Achilles injury ruined his chances this year. Meanwhile, Canada’s young core of NBA talent should be that much further along on their development curve.
This was supposed to be the summer that Canada Basketball shone brightest internationally.
Now, thanks to the ultimate plot twist, everyone will have to wait.
That much, at least, we’re used to.
“All the athletes are in the same position and we have to do the best for all,” said Grunwald. “Now’s the time to be smart about it and take our time and get it right.”
PARIS (AP) — French judicial authorities are investigating the disappearance of two Paralympic athletes from Congo who recently competed in the Paris Games, the prosecutor’s office in the Paris suburb of Bobigny confirmed on Thursday.
Prosecutors opened the investigation on Sept. 7, after members of the athletes’ delegation warned authorities of their disappearance two days before.
Le Parisien newspaper reported that shot putter Mireille Nganga and Emmanuel Grace Mouambako, a visually impaired sprinter who was accompanied by a guide, went missing on Sept. 5, along with a third person.
The athletes’ suitcases were also gone but their passports remained with the Congolese delegation, according to an official with knowledge of the investigation, who asked to remain anonymous as they were not allowed to speak publicly about the case.
The Paralympic Committee of the Democratic Republic of Congo did not respond to requests for information from The Associated Press.
Nganga — who recorded no mark in the seated javelin and shot put competitions — and Mouambako were Congo’s flag bearers at the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games, organizers said.
An investigator gave the World Anti-Doping Agency a pass on its handling of the inflammatory case involving Chinese swimmers, but not without hammering away at the “curious” nature of WADA’s “silence” after examining Chinese actions that did not follow rules designed to safeguard global sports.
WADA on Thursday released the full decision from Eric Cottier, the Swiss investigator it appointed to analyze its handling of the case involving the 23 Chinese swimmers who remained eligible despite testing positive for performance enhancers in 2021.
In echoing wording from an interim report issued earlier this summer, Cottier said it was “reasonable” that WADA chose not to appeal the Chinese anti-doping agency’s explanation that the positives came from contamination.
“Taking into consideration the particularities of the case, (WADA) appears … to have acted in accordance with the rules it has itself laid out for anti-doping organizations,” Cottier wrote.
But peppered throughout his granular, 56-page analysis of the case was evidence and reminders of how WADA disregarded some of China’s violations of anti-doping protocols. Cottier concluded this happened more for the sake of expediency than to show favoritism toward the Chinese.
“In retrospect at least, the Agency’s silence is curious, in the face of a procedure that does not respect the fundamental rules, and its lack of reaction is surprising,” Cottier wrote of WADA’s lack of fealty to the world anti-doping code.
Travis Tygart, the CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and one of WADA’s fiercest critics, latched onto this dynamic, saying Cottier’s information “clearly shows that China did not follow the rules, and that WADA management did nothing about it.”
One of the chief complaints over the handling of this case was that neither WADA nor the Chinese gave any public notice upon learning of the positive tests for the banned heart medication Temozolomide, known as TMZ.
The athletes also were largely kept in the dark and the burden to prove their innocence was taken up by Chinese authorities, not the athletes themselves, which runs counter to what the rulebook demands.
Despite the criticisms, WADA generally welcomed the report.
“Above all, (Cottier) reiterated that WADA showed no bias towards China and that its decision not to appeal the cases was reasonable based on the evidence,” WADA director general Olivier Niggli said. “There are however certainly lessons to be learned by WADA and others from this situation.”
Tygart said “this report validates our concerns and only raises new questions that must be answered.”
Cottier expanded on doubts WADA’s own chief scientist, Olivier Rabin, had expressed over the Chinese contamination theory — snippets of which were introduced in the interim report. Rabin was wary of the idea that “a few micrograms” of TMZ found in the kitchen at the hotel where the swimmers stayed could be enough to cause the group contamination.
“Since he was not in a position to exclude the scenario of contamination with solid evidence, he saw no other solution than to accept it, even if he continued to have doubts about the reality of contamination as described by the Chinese authorities,” Cottier wrote.
Though recommendations for changes had been expected in the report, Cottier made none, instead referring to several comments he’d made earlier in the report.
Key among them were his misgivings that a case this big was largely handled in private — a breach of custom, if not the rules themselves — both while China was investigating and after the file had been forwarded to WADA. Not until the New York Times and German broadcaster ARD reported on the positives were any details revealed.
“At the very least, the extraordinary nature of the case (23 swimmers, including top-class athletes, 28 positive tests out of 60 for a banned substance of therapeutic origin, etc.), could have led to coordinated and concerted reflection within the Agency, culminating in a formal and clearly expressed decision to take no action,” the report said.
WADA’s executive committee established a working group to address two more of Cottier’s criticisms — the first involving what he said was essentially WADA’s sloppy recordkeeping and lack of formal protocol, especially in cases this complex; and the second a need to better flesh out rules for complex cases involving group contamination.
The French league’s legal commission has ordered Paris Saint-Germain to pay Kylian Mbappé the 55 million euros ($61 million) in unpaid wages that he claims he’s entitled to, the league said Thursday.
The league confirmed the decision to The Associated Press without more details, a day after the France superstar rejected a mediation offer by the commission in his dispute with his former club.
