I keep not booking my plane ticket to Tokyo to cover the Olympics. It’s the only thing on my to-do list, and it’s big. I learned that I was credentialed for the 2020 Games a few weeks ago, completing a professional goal I set for myself on the night of the closing ceremony at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio. And yet it seems absurd to even consider buying that ticket. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused virtually every sporting event on earth to be canceled, and nonessential international travel has been banned. But I’m supposed to fly to Tokyo in four months? Sure. I’ll just snag a round-trip ticket to Mars to watch Tupac and Biggie perform together while I’m at it.
Last week feels like it was last year; the idea of going into an office for work feels like something I read about in a history book. Honestly, I’m surprised when I look out the window and see that buildings are in the same place they were yesterday. Yet the International Olympic Committee insists that on July 24 the world will come together to celebrate the start of the 32nd Olympiad. I have to ask: In what world? Not this one, right?
It’s surprising enough that the Summer Olympics have yet to be postponed. But the public stance adopted by the stakeholders involved goes beyond that, as they seem unwilling to even consider the possibility that things might not go according to plan. IOC president Thomas Bach issued a statement last Tuesday that “the IOC remains fully committed to the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020.” Not only that, but Bach also said that “there is no need for any drastic decisions” and “any speculation at this moment would be counterproductive.” We’re not even supposed to speculate the Olympics schedule could be altered in any way. Bach followed that up by telling The New York Times that cancellation and postponement of the games are “not on the agenda.” And his messaging is not alone.
“We will overcome the spread of the infection and host the Olympics without problem, as planned,” Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe said on March 14. Seiko Hashimoto, Japan’s Olympics minister, recently said she expects an Olympiad “started on time and with spectators in attendance.” The country is currently carrying out its Olympic torch relay, drawing crowds of hundreds despite large gatherings being discouraged across the globe. Meanwhile, the deputy head of Japan’s Olympic committee, Kozo Tashima, has tested positive for the virus.
Last week, the IOC held a meeting with the heads of the national Olympic committees around the world about the coronavirus crisis—and somehow emerged with a variety of statements fully affirming the decision to proceed forward with the games. Sunday, the IOC finally admitted that it has to think about postponing the games, saying that it needs four weeks to come to its decision. However, the IOC statement also featured a long list of reasons why it should not postpone the games, and included the defiant, baffling claim that “a cancellation of the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 would not solve any of the problems or help anybody.” (Yes it would! It would solve the problem of having an international sporting event during a pandemic!)
Everyone else seems to understand how dire this situation is. Canada, which sent more athletes to the 2016 Rio Olympics than all but eight countries, just announced that it will refuse to send athletes to this year’s games if they are not postponed. Australia has told athletes to prepare for a 2021 Olympiad. The international governing body of track and field—just about the biggest sport at the Summer Olympics—has also called for postponement. A USA Today poll of American Olympians revealed 70 percent are in favor of postponing the games.
Of all the sporting events in existence, the Olympics are probably the most dangerous to hold during a global pandemic. Remember, this is an event that, by design, invites athletes from every country on the planet, puts them in the same place for two weeks, and then sends them home. The athletes even typically live together in one big apartment complex or village!
Practically every prominent organization has acknowledged the gravity of what’s happening, with many prioritizing public health over financial gain. All the while, the IOC continues to smile and pretend that everything is all right, offering reassurances completely uncoupled from reality. With alarm bells sounding and the mortality rate on the rise, the world needs a voice to calmly tell people what measures are in place to fix the problem. When the IOC acts as if there is no problem, it reveals problems of its own.
We don’t need to debate what it would take for a major sporting event to be canceled or postponed anymore. We’ve already seen them all go. Perhaps it’s better to consider what would need to happen for an international event like the Olympics to happen in July without potentially accelerating the spread of a highly infectious disease.
First, Japan would need to ensure that its residents and public spaces would not spread the virus. It’d be unthinkable to bring athletes, coaches, media, and fans into a nation where the virus is widespread only to send them back to their respective countries and trigger new waves of outbreaks across the globe. Thus far, the virus seems surprisingly contained in Japan. The country just recorded its 1,000th case of COVID-19 last week despite having its first case all the way back in January. The bad news is some feel this number is artificially low due to low numbers of testing, and that cases could spike in the near future. “My guess is that Japan is about to see the explosion and will inevitably shift from containment to delay-the-peak phase very soon,” Kenji Shibuya, a professor at King’s College London and a former chief of health policy at the World Health Organization, recently told Bloomberg. “The number of tests is increasing, but not enough.”
Second, every athlete competing in the games would need to test negative for the virus. That in and of itself would presumably knock several medal candidates out of contention, and the ones who test negative would have to quarantine themselves before and after the games. That also seems like a major issue. How would this quarantine be monitored on a consistent and global scale? How could athletes spend the two weeks before the biggest sporting event of their lives cooped up inside without training? And that’s not even accounting for how many tests would be required during a critical worldwide shortage of them.
Third, the games would need to determine which athletes would qualify. Athletes in many countries are currently not allowed to train. Almost all Olympic qualifying events have been canceled or postponed. In events where Olympians are widely drawn from pro sports leagues—basketball, tennis, golf, etc.—it’s unclear whether the leagues’ rearranged schedules will include breaks to allow athletes to compete in the Olympics. How can we expect the Olympics to answer the most complicated questions about holding an international event during a pandemic when it’s unclear how they would answer something as basic as Who even gets to compete?
Then there are the nonathlete components. Hashimoto, the Olympics minister, says she expects spectators to be in attendance. Would they all be tested, too? How would those visitors from overseas limit their interaction with others in a city with a population of more than 9 million? And what would happen with the media? Add it all up, and there’s a reason I still haven’t booked my plane ticket.
The Olympics are harder to cancel than other sporting events because the Olympics are totally unlike other sporting events. March Madness will be back again next year; the NBA, MLB, and NHL seasons could resume in a few months on truncated schedules. The Summer Olympics, by contrast, take place once every four years. Sure, athletes in Olympic sports can win world championships in non-Olympic years, but that often fails to bring the prestige of winning an Olympic medal. Athletes train precisely so that they reach their athletic peak during Olympic years.
Yet with their Olympic dreams in danger of disappearing, the athletes have been some of the loudest voices calling for cancellation or postponement of these games. “I’ve been training for the Olympics since I was a little kid,” American gymnast Colin Van Wicklen tweeted. “However … postponing the games is a must.” “I would love to be part of the Olympics once again, I have been waiting for it for four years” Greek pole vaulter Katerina Stefanidi said. “But I don’t see a situation where it would be safe for us to all be locked in the same Olympic village this year.” On Friday, USA Swimming put out a statement calling for the games to be postponed.
Despite such pleas, however, the IOC and Tokyo organizing committee remain steadfast that the games will go on as scheduled. This lays bare the driving force behind the Olympics stakeholders’ messaging: Even if some renowned athletes are willing to pass up a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to compete, the stakeholders refuse to pass up a once-every-four-years opportunity to get paid.
The IOC makes billions off of its broadcast deals with television networks around the world, and those would go up in smoke if the Olympics don’t happen. NBC paid the IOC $7.75 billion to broadcast the games between 2022 and 2032—with six Olympic games in that period, that comes out to over a billion dollars per Olympiad. A deal for European Olympic broadcast rights was worth $1.4 billion for four games; the IOC’s deal with China’s television network is worth $550 million for four games. If there are no games to broadcast, the IOC would lose out on a gargantuan sum of money.
And Tokyo wants the Olympics to happen because it has spent billions of dollars building the stadiums and infrastructure needed to host the games. While the Japanese government says it’s only—only!—spent $12.6 billion on the games, an audit reveals that the total is likely about $28 billion. If the Olympics don’t happen, the country would get no return on investment. All it will be left with is arenas for random sports that might never be used. This is why the Olympics are moving full-steam ahead in a world that’s otherwise shuttering—the stakeholders feel like they have too much to lose.
Over the past few decades, we have seen how the Olympics’ operational model can be unsustainable and irresponsible. The stadiums from the 2004 Games in Athens crumbled as Greece plummeted into financial crisis in the late 2000s; the empty stadiums in Rio overlook a city that has answered gang violence with police violence. There is a growing global NOlympics movement, and the past few years have seen city after city vote against hosting the games, spanning from Munich to Krakow to Calgary. (Boston and Budapest withdrew their bids before voting.) Having the Olympics in a new place every four years is a great concept, but in 2020 the drawbacks outweigh the rewards.
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19825703/1213619465.jpg.jpg)
Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images
The COVID-19 pandemic is exposing an even bigger problem with the Olympic model: When you host a hugely expensive event in a different city once every four years, the show apparently must go on—even at the risk of spreading an incurable disease. Three years ago, I wrote a post proposing the Summer Olympics be held in the same place every four years, or in a variety of cities across the globe. (The basketball events could be held in New York, the track and field events in London, the swimming in Beijing, etc.) I was mainly thinking about reducing the financial burden of hosting the games on an individual city, but I also suspect these models would limit the financial impact of, at the very least, acknowledging a global health crisis. Perhaps that could make the Olympic organizing committee less dead set on going forward with the games to recoup its losses.
The coronavirus has highlighted the flaws within many of our institutions, and the Olympics are no different. It’s time for the IOC to consider changes not only to the upcoming Olympiad, but to the way it operates in general. But to do so, it will have to acknowledge that there is a problem. If the 2020 Games are an indication, that seems to be the last thing on the IOC’s mind.
The Olympic rings are set up at Trocadero plaza that overlooks the Eiffel Tower in Paris.Michel Euler/The Associated Press
In the middle of a record haul at the Tokyo Olympics, Canada’s women’s swim team had one letdown – the 4×200-metre freestyle relay.
Canada had taken bronze in the event at Rio 2016 and again at the 2019 world aquatics championships. The team looked good for another medal.
On the day of the final, a Chinese team that was not considered a contender surprised everyone, winning in world-record time. Canada came fourth.
A battling result, but still disappointing. It looks a little worse than that now.
Over the weekend, the New York Times reported that nearly half the Chinese swim team failed a drug test seven months before the Tokyo Games. Twenty-three swimmers tested positive for trimetazidine, or TMZ.
TMZ is a synthetic substance. You’re not going to pick it up because you’ve chosen the wrong hot-dog vendor.
China was allowed to do its own investigation into the mass positive. That probe determined the athletes had been exposed to TMZ in tainted food at a team hotel. How exactly so many of them ingested it, while others did not, wasn’t explained.
Unusually, no announcement was made about the positive tests, and no one was suspended while the investigation was under way. The World Anti-Doping Agency knew what was going on, but decided the best way to determine if China had done anything wrong was to ask China to look into it. When China gave China the all clear, WADA signed off.
One of those who tested positive was Zhang Yufei. Zhang won three medals in Tokyo, one of them as part of the 4x200m relay team.
The swimming world is now playing doping leapfrog throughout those Games. The Canadian relay team is on a long list of unlucky losers. Had China’s violations stuck, the medal table would look very different.
It would also have pushed a Games that was on the edge closer to the drop. Few in Japan were super stoked about the world dropping by en masse during what would become that country’s first mass COVID wave.
The main reason the Tokyo Games happened was that so much money had been spent, much more was still owed, and insurers were not willing to write down 10 or 15 billion.
Picking a fight with China in that precarious moment could not have seemed like a great idea. Even more precarious – the next Games, to be held six months later in Beijing.
As an event, at absolute best, Beijing 2022 was going to be a very expensive bummer (which it absolutely was). That’s the sort of party that’s easy to call off.
You don’t need to be a Reddit obsessive to see what happened here. The Chinese swim team got caught mid-purge, and the people in charge had to prioritize their response.
Priority No. 1 – the Olympic business.
Priority No. 2 – the Olympic ideals.
They picked money over fairness.
It’s easy to lash them now, so plenty of people are. The head of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency called it “a devastating stab in the back of clean athletes.”
(Is it possible to be undevastatingly stabbed in the back?)
The stickiest criticism involves Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva. She also tested positive for trace amounts of TMZ before an Olympics. She also had one of those ‘maybe the dog gave me steroids’-type excuses.
But since everybody hates Russia, Valieva did not get the benefit of an in-house probe. She was dragged upside-down and backward through the global press and stripped of her medals. There’s your fairness.
It’s fitting that WADA take a reputational beating here. That is its most useful function – to absorb stakeholder rage after another own goal has been scored by the Doping Police.
But out in the real world, no one cares. Of course the Olympics is dirty. The Olympics has spent the last half century repeatedly reminding us of that.
Between Games, the Olympics makes news only two ways – ‘Upcoming host city X is having serious second thoughts’ and ‘So-and-so cheated their way to gold.’
These stories have become so numerous that the only people registering them are the ones who make their living in an Olympics-adjacent business, like sports administration or media.
Those people are happy to complain – complaining is good for trade – but they don’t want things to change. Change is dangerous. Who knows where change will land you?
In this specific instance, real change in the form of zero tolerance could have hobbled one Olympics and gotten the next one cancelled. Then what?
You start cancelling Olympics and people learn to live without them. Sponsors find new things to sponsor. Broadcasters move on.
Better to compromise. Chinese swimmers did a little TMZ. So what? Figure skaters, tennis players, breaststrokers – everybody’s doing it nowadays. It’s like weed for the Marx and Engels crowd.
With all that in mind, here’s something you won’t often read in this space – WADA made the right call.
It’s not like it was going to go swanning into Guangdong province in early 2021, right in the teeth of the pandemic, to figure out what was what. The only way to get any sort of answers was to rely on Chinese investigators. How do you know if they’re on the up and up? You don’t. WADA had two choices – take China’s word for it, or go scorched earth right before the two most tenuously assembled Games in history.
The proof that WADA made the correct choice is that those Games happened. Maybe it would make a different call now, and that might be right, too.
As far as fairness goes, it doesn’t belong in this conversation.
If a Belgian or a Tanzanian gets caught cheating, don’t even bother asking for consideration.
An American? Probably not.
An American everyone knows? Maybe.
A lot of Americans everybody knows? Let’s talk.
This can’t be discussed because once that discussion gets going, it points toward the sort of change no current stakeholder want to think about. If someone who tests positive can negotiate their way out of it and fairness is the goal, isn’t it fairer to stop testing altogether?
Was it an alley-oop? A Hail Mary? A Jerry Rice post route? Catch and ReLeaf?
Article content
Whatever it was, it was the goal Toronto Maple Leafs fans were waiting for.
Article content
If the Leafs go on to beat the Boston Bruins and make it out of the first round for the second year in a row, fans will look back at Max Domi’s flip pass and Auston Matthews’ catch and finish as the moment it all became possible.
Matthews’ 70th goal of the season (69+1 if we’re splitting hairs) was maybe his finest.
The play: Incredible. The catch: Immaculate. The finish: Nasty. The timing: Perfect.
Social media had plenty to say about Monday’s game-winning goal, but first let’s listen to calls of the play from every corner of the playoff series:
Chris Cuthbert on Hockey Night in Canada:
Article content
Retiring voice of the Boston Bruins Jack Edwards:
Article content
Of course, nothing can compare to Joe Bowen’s call on Toronto radio. Any Leafs moment isn’t complete until fans hear what the High Priest of Holy Mackinaw said, and he didn’t disappoint:
Article content
It didn’t take long for Matthews’ game-winner to go viral across social media, with fans, media and ex-players weighing in on the incredible goal. The Leafs and Bruins resume their first round series on Wednesday in Toronto at 7 p.m.
Share this article in your social network
It was a game of big numbers at Rogers Place that featured 82 shots, 72 faceoffs, 112 hits and 11 goals. Connor McDavid scored 5 points, Zach Hyman and Evan Bouchard 4 each. Adam Henrique scored his first playoff point in 12 years. And the Edmonton Oilers won the opening game of a playoff series on their home ice for the first time in 12,409 days.
Article content
But win it they did, cruising to a 7-4 win over Los Angeles Kings to establish a 1-0 series lead in the 2024 edition of the seemingly annual opening round series between the two.
Advertisement 2
Article content
It wasn’t always pretty, but several of the goals sure were. The Oilers held the advantage in play, outshooting the Kings 45-37 with an 18-10 advantage in Grade A Shots as recorded by the Cult of Hockey (running count). 8 of those Grade A shots came on a red-hot powerplay that produced 3 goals in a combined time of 4:50.
#2 Evan Bouchard, 7. Moved the puck well for the most part and had 4 secondary assists to show for it, not to mention a tertiary that doesn’t show up on the scoresheet. But was among the defensive culprits on both LA goals that cut a 4-0 lead in half before the end of the second period. Way more good than bad on the night. Contributions to Grade A Shots (GAS): Even Strength +3/-2, Special Teams +1/-0.
#5 Cody Ceci, 6. Played a rock solid defensive game, landing 5 hits and winning the lion’s share of battles. Victimized on a couple of unlucky goals against in garbage time, and in the spotlight himself on 1 of them when his stick exploded making a routine D-to-D pass after a won neutral zone faceoff. His 19:00 at even strength led the team. GAS: ES +2/-3; ST +1/-0.
Headline News
Article content
Advertisement 3
Article content
#13 Mattias Janmark, 5. Classic Janmark game in which not a whole lot happened during his 10 minutes of action, pro or con. Tagged with an undeserved -1 on the Ceci-stick-explodes goal. GAS: +0/-0; ST 0.
#14 Mattias Ekholm, 6. Solid with a couple of shaky moments. Made a couple of lunging stops on the same dangerous sequence. His neutral zone turnover led to a Viktor Arvidsson breakaway early in the second, then he was unable to contain Adrian Kempe on the 4-2. Delivered a great stretch pass to Hyman for a breakaway chance. Led the D with 2:00 on the penalty kill. GAS: ES +4/-2; ST 0.
#18 Zach Hyman, 9. All over it from the get-go, driving hard to the net time and again. Scored a goal in each period by materializing in a dangerous spot and converting a McDavid pass from close range. Added a primary assist on Henrique’s goal. Took a goalie interference for another net drive gone wrong. Later drew a call the other way. Hit a post in a scramble. Robbed by Talbot’s best save of the game on a breakaway. Took a knock on the continuation of that play and was in pain, but returned for another shift and appeared to be OK. May have set a record for most hats on the ice for a hat trick. 9 shots on net to lead both teams. Also added 5 hits and was a central figure in the battle all night long. GAS: ES +7/-1; ST+3/-0.
Advertisement 4
Article content
#19 Adam Henrique, 7. His first playoff game in 6 years and his first playoff win in 12. Won a battle leading to the first Oilers goal, scored the second himself with a strong wrist shot from range, then earned an assist on the third. Made a great aerial deflection of Ceci’s outside shot. Took a penalty. Among those beaten on the first Kings goal. GAS: ES +4/-1; ST +1/-1.
#25 Darnell Nurse, 6. Played a solid 2-way game with 7 shot attempts, 2 blocks, and 6 hits. Won a lot of battles along the way. Pasted Kempe in the early going with a booming open-ice hit. Safe and sound behind his own blueline until the very late going, when a cross-ice pass caught his skate and found the net to make it 6-3. GAS: ES +0/-2; ST 0.
#27 Brett Kulak, 5. Low event game including no goals at either end of the sheet during his 16 minutes. GAS: ES +0/-2; ST 0.
#29 Leon Draisaitl, 8. Nearly wrecked himself on his opening shift when he took a run at a King and missed, but thankfully survived. Did his best work on the powerplay, setting up an RNH tally with a brilliant pass and scoring the winning goal himself with a brilliant shot. Also made a superb pass to RNH on an even-strength 2-on-1 that wasn’t converted. Strong defensively. Drew a penalty. Rock solid on the faceoff dot at 15/24=63%. 3 shots at one end, 2 blocks (!) at the other. GAS: ES =0/-0; ST +5/-0.
Advertisement 5
Article content
#37 Warren Foegele, 6. Mashed Drew Doughty with an excellent hit in the very early going. Played a simple, solid game. Scored the empty netter that finalized the score line, after first stealing the puck in the neutral zone.
#39 Sam Carrick, 5. Played his first career playoff game at age 32 and got the job done. His line with Holloway and Janmark lost the possession battle but held their own on the scoresheet until the late fluke. He did get tagged with a -1 on the 4-2, but his “mistake” there was to do the job hjje was sent out to do and win a d-zone faceoff. 1 shot, 2 blocks, 4 hits, and 10/18=56% on the dot. GAS: +0/-0; ST 0.
#55 Dylan Holloway, 5. Held his own in his second career playoff game. GAS: +0/-0; ST 0.
#71 Ryan McLeod, 6. Played a fine defensive game between the vets Kane and Perry. 2 takeaways, 2 blocked shots. GAS: ES +2/-0; ST 0.
#73 Vincent Desharnais, 6. Rock of Gibraltar on the blue, with 6 hits and 5 shot blocks. On the receiving end of a nasty low-bridge hit by Trevor Moore that left him in obvious pain as the second period wound down, but returned in the third to finish the job. Best of all, the Oil scored the game winner on the resultant powerplay. GAS: +0/-1; ST 0.
Advertisement 6
Article content
#74 Stu Skinner, 6. Very good in the first half of the game. Contributed the TSN Turning Point when he got a tiny piece of his pad on Viktor Arvidsson’s breakaway shot, with the Oilers subsequently scoring on the continuation. The game that could have been 2-1, was instead 3-0. The back half of the game went less well with 4 official GA and a fifth which was gloved in and correctly called back after a couple of nervous minutes. Struggled a bit with rebound control. 37 shots, 33 saves, .892 save percentage.
#90 Corey Perry, 5. Put the puck in good places, including on Kane’s stick for a couple of great chances in tight. 3 hits, 2 takeaways. GAS: ES +2/-0; ST 0.
#91 Evander Kane, 6. Was visible throughout, mostly in good ways. Fired 6 shots on net including a couple of powerful wristers. nearly squeezing one through Talbot. Did have a couple of issues suppressing outside shots from the point. Led EDM forwards with 15:45 TOI at even strength. GAS: ES +3/-1.
#93 Ryan Nugent Hopkins, 6. Set up perfectly by Draisaitl for what apepared to be a wide open net, but the puck rolled off his stick. Made up for it a few minutes later with a strong goal mouth finish of another sweet Draisaitl feed. 4 shots, 2 blocks, 2 hits, 1 takeaway, and a team-high 2:04 on the 2-for-2 penalty kill. GAS: ES +0/-0; ST +1/-0.
Advertisement 7
Article content
#97 Connor McDavid, 9. Became just the 15th player in NHL history with 5 (or more) assists in a playoff game, joining dynasty Oilers Wayne Gretzky (2x), Paul Coffey, Glenn Anderson and 10 others from other teams. 4 of them were primary assists, including all 3 of Hyman’s tallies. Twice McDavid beat defenders with brilliant spin moves before dishing. Threaded a bullet pass through Matt Roy’s skates for Hyman’s hat trick goal. 3 shots, 3 hits, and uncounted passes. GAS: ES +3/-0; ST +6/-0.
STAPLES: Big questions about Nurse-Ceci pairing
STAPLES: Hitting is way up in playoffs. Are Oilers up to it?
McCURDY: Kane, Janmark, Holloway all look good to go for Game One
McCURDY: Oilers vs. Kings anything but a foregone conclusion
STAPLES: Kane, Janmark missing from practice. What are the implications?
STAPLES: Pretty much every NHL commentator is picking Oilers over Kings
Article content
See how chicken farmers are trying to stop the spread of bird flu – Fox 46 Charlotte
Osoyoos commuters invited to celebrate Earth Day with the Leg Day challenge – Oliver/Osoyoos News – Castanet.net
Haberman on why David Pecker testifying is ‘fundamentally different’ – CNN
Freeland defends budget measures, as premiers push back on federal involvement – CBC News
The Fed's Forecasting Method Looks Increasingly Outdated as Bernanke Pitches an Alternative – Bloomberg
It's possible to rely on plant proteins without sacrificing training gains, new studies say – The Globe and Mail
Gildan replacing five directors ahead of AGM, will back two Browning West nominees – Yahoo Canada Finance
Meta Expands VR Operating System to Third-Party Hardware Makers – MacRumors
Comments