The news was expected and unsurprising, yet it is striking to read that the Olympics scheduled for next summer in Japan have been postponed. The reason is, of course, the pandemic caused by COVID-19 that is raging, as of today’s date, in more than 150 countries around the world and has now exceeded 400,000 people infected.
While these numbers are already remarkable but not yet frightening in the face of a world population of 7 billion, it is the relentless progression and spread of the virus and especially the ease with which it manages to increase infections day after day that has frightened the Olympic Committee to the point where it has taken, in agreement with Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, the decision to postpone such an important event.
In the confusion and fear that have been reigning for weeks something that will happen in a few months might even seem so distant in time as to delude that things can be fixed but, as has already been seen and said, it is the consequences and the difficulty of containing such an outbreak that has made the choice, as the official statement reads, not to endanger the health of the athletes and the public.
The effects of globalization
A peculiar aspect is that Japan has relatively solved the problem of the spread of COVID-19 and thus would paradoxically have been ready to host the games by guaranteeing safety on its territory but there are too many variables considering the origins of the athletes and the timing with which the epidemic is developing. In some ways it is like seeing the world lit up by fireworks (even if they are viral explosions) that go off days apart eventually involving every nation. What Japan experienced a month ago Italy is experiencing now, and in 15 days England and the U.S. will experience, and so on, in a chain.
Nor could it be overlooked that many athletes would not have been able to complete their training anyway because of the many restrictions imposed by national governments, as we Italians well know.
A beacon of hope
The committee also chose, in agreement with the Japanese government, to keep the Olympic flame in Japan as a symbol of the hope that should animate and unite all nations in the effort to eradicate the coronavirus.
The Olympics will be held after 2020 and before the summer of 2021, and will still be called the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. Qualifications completed so far will be frozen (and qualified athletes confirmed, accordingly) while those that were yet to take place will be recalculated.
The postponement solution is also the most economically feasible because cancellation would have involved paying very heavy penalties to sponsors who had already advanced sums or made commitments to the Olympic Committee. In short, the situation is, from every point of view, frozen and postponed for a year.
While we wait for the calendar to be redefined, all we can do is move the date to next year, confident that it will be a joyous holiday, celebrated by a world finally freed from the virus.
(Photo by Pawel Nolbert on Unsplash)