Nolympics 2020

Four years ago this time, I expected to be providing my usual satirical comments on about the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.  But of course, I don't need to tell you again that the Games were postponed until 2021 as a result of COVID-19. Though, to be honest, the chances of this damn virus affecting the planet this time next year as it is now are, alas, pretty good, so it's possible if not likely that the Olympics will be canceled entirely - which would be the first time that's happened since 1944. 

I'm relieved, actually, because I tend to go over the top in my Olympic commentary in an effort to cover as many different events and competitions as possible, and it's quite exhausting.  And as you already may have gathered, I'm not very confident in Tokyo pulling the Games off in 2021, either.  Good grief, why are the Olympics being held in Tokyo exactly one year from now?  Bear in mind that 1940 Olympics and the 1964 Olympics were both given to Tokyo, and both were scheduled for early fall.  As with the 1944 Games, the 1940 event was canceled due to World War II; the 1964 Games were in Tokyo as planned.) This is because eastern Asia is known for lousy weather in the summer.  Not only that, the chances of getting the pandemic behind us ("us" meaning the seven billion-odd people on this planet) are much better for the autumn of 2021 than for the first three seasons of the year.

One other thing I'd like to say, despite the controversy it might cause, is that I think it's also time to move the 2022 Winter Olympics from Beijing.  China's leaders are wholly responsible for letting this virus escape their borders and infecting everyone else, and the Chinese leadership has to answer for that.  Also, Beijing already held the Summer Olympics only twelve years ago (2008), the city itself is in a less-than-ideal climate for winter sports, and unlike previous Winter Olympic cities, it's just too damn big for an event that is considerably smaller and more intimate than the main Olympiad.  Let Pyeongchang hold the Winter Games again, or better yet, give them to 2022 bidder Almaty in Kazakhstan - because why should Russia  be the only ex-Soviet republic that gets to hold the biggest international sporting event in the world?  (Sochi was ridiculous, given its mild climate and its inability to keep enough snow on the ground for the outdoor events.)  I know Trump is on record as supporting a move of the 2022 Winter Olympics to somewhere else, but I really don't mind agreeing with him on this issue.     

Let the Games Begin Later

The International Olympic Committee has postponed the Tokyo Olympics.  Note that I did not refer to them as the "2020 Tokyo Olympics," as the coronavirus pandemic that necessitated the delay is not expected to subside before the end of this year.  Sports reporters are already saying that the spring of 2021 is the likeliest time the Games will be held.

And since the Olympic flame had already been lit in a solemn ceremony, there might as well be another solemn ceremony in which the flame is quietly put out before it even reaches the stadium.

I never understood why the Olympic organizing committee in Tokyo thought it would be a good idea to hold the Games in  late July and early August in the first place.  East Asian summers are notorious for their volatile weather, which is why the 1964 Tokyo Olympics were held in October and why the canceled 1940 Tokyo Olympics (Japan was too busy conquering the Pacific to stage them) had been scheduled for late September and early October.  Had the Chinese gotten ahead of this virus sooner, as they did with SARS in 2002 and 2003 and H1N1 in 2009, or even if the rest of the world had done so and followed the example of South Korea, which was on the virus crisis in a New York minute, it might have been possible to postpone the Tokyo Olympics until early fall. Now that the virus could hit in a second wave by then, 2021 is thus the target date.  Heck, I'd bet on 2022, because who knows if the virus will be under control by next year?  Speaking of 2022, Beijing is holding the Winter Olympics that year, which seems rather foolish in light of the foul-ups, bleeps and blunders in China's initial handling of the outbreak and already seemed foolish given that Beijing already held the 2008 Games (which wasn't too long ago in the Big Bang scheme of things).  Now is the time to move the Winter Games.

Given the fragility of the environment and the numerous health crises we've had on this planet in the past decade, I would expect to see the Olympics revert to their original state as a low-key sporting event without a lot of pomp and circumstance.  A few of the first Olympiads were in fact held as world's fair sideshows.  The staging of the Games as a grand spectacle actually started with Adolf Hitler's display of nationalism at the 1936 Berlin Games (below), with the 1936 Winter Olympics in the German skiing town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen having offered a sneak preview of the bigger event.  (Nineteen thirty-six was the third - and, understandably, last - time in which the Winter and Summer Games both took place in the same country in the same year.)

So, yes, all of the gaudy opening ceremonies of subsequent Olympiads were the unintended consequence of Berlin 1936.  Heck, the Atlanta Olympic opening ceremony of 1996 was so overblown it seemed like the only thing that could redeem it was if Muhammad Ali were to light the cauldron; thankfully, that's exactly what happened.  And the expensive facilities, the outrageous ticket prices, and the asinine coverage offered by corporate television helped make the Games into a huge, bloated affair, even the once-intimate Winter Olympics.  It just gets more and more costly to stage them; Tokyo got the Games of the XXXII Olympiad by default, because so few cities were interested in bidding for them due to concerns over cost.  It's time to scale them back, bring them back to where they were in the early decades of the Olympic movement, and concentrate on the whole raison d'être for the Games - sport.

And now for something completely different - sport! ;-)  

Coronavirus

I haven't brought up the coronavirus on this blog up to now because I thought there was nothing I could possibly say about it, other than it's bad, like earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.  But the coronavirus outbreak has gotten worse than "bad."

Over 86,000 people all over the world have contracted coronavirus, which originated in China, with over sixty countries affected, and nearly three thousand coronavirus patients, including two in the United States, have died - these numbers may be higher by the time you read this.  The coronavirus has already forced the cancellation of the Geneva Motor Show in Switzerland and, even as I'm wondering if I should even bother going to the auto show in New York this April (more of that later), the Japanese - who have cancelled school across the country for a whole month - are even wondering if they can hold the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.  (The 1940 Tokyo Olympics were cancelled by World War II, but Tokyo did host the Olympics in 1964.) So far, no sporting events in America have been canceled, and there haven't been that many cases here yet, but I wouldn't be surprised to see the 2020 World Series - which even Hitler or an earthquake couldn't stop, although a greed-motivated baseball strike in 1994 did - also get scrubbed.  Heck, Major League Baseball might want to sit out the whole season!

The Geneva Motor Show was cancelled due to a Swiss government edict banning large events until March 15, the day the show was supposed to end.  The Swiss and the Japanese seem to think the worst of the coronavirus crisis will be over before long, but those bans could be extended.  And even if large gatherings in Switzerland are allowed again as of March 16, the Geneva car show couldn't be postponed for a week or two - there's too much organization involved. Switzerland acted as it did because every nation surrounding it has a report of a coronavirus outbreak.  This past week, the Swiss reported a coronavirus case of their own.  Switzerland was able to stay neutral during World War II because it was protected by the Alps; now the world has gotten so interconnected, geography and topography can't save anyone.

The good news about the coronavirus outbreak is that governments over the world are on it, with South Korea testing thousands of people and disinfecting public spaces and Italy trying to keep coronavirus-infected areas from expanding. The bad news is that the United States has not been one of those countries.  Trump spent several days dismissing the coronavirus scare as a hoax and had put a gag order on health officials who know more about coronavirus than he does.  Without a scintilla of evidence to support his claims, he keeps telling Americans that the coronavirus outbreak will slow down and go away like a miracle.  Oh, it will slow down and go away eventually, but not as quickly as Trump would like it.  He said it would taper off by April; just bear in mind that he didn't say what year.

With the first two coronavirus deaths in America having occurred, Trump is suddenly taking it more seriously than he did before, but his approach is more happy talk and less preparation.  This virus has been around for awhile, as cases showing up only now began weeks earlier.  There are perhaps many more cases that haven't fully manifested themselves.   

Even if there were reason to believe that the coronavirus outbreak could taper off sooner rather than later, there's no indication that we're prepared to handle the coronavirus cases we do get, and the number is still rising.  We need more respirators, as this is a disease affecting breathing.  We need a more robust health-care delivery system, something we Americans have not been good at of late.  A lot of the health-care products we use come from China, where, as noted, the coronavirus started in the first place.  While it's beginning to level off there, the Chinese will still take a long time to recover before they're able to export such products to us.  Not too many other countries who make these health-care products - including this one - can make up the gap easily.   Meanwhile, the coronavirus has affected Chinese supply lines for other goods, which is bound to cause shortages elsewhere.  Hence the stock market falling 11 percent last week.

I can't let this go without mentioning one other thing: Even though the coronavirus started in China, the Chinese government tried to silence those who warned about it.  One of the doctors who was silenced has since died.  Now coronavirus is spreading all over the world.  China makes just about everything for everyone else; why did we surrender our economic power to the Chinese?? 

All of us have to be prepared for normal life bring replaced not by temporary circumstances but by a new norm. A lot of us will either have to give up going to special events or be very careful in attending them.  A lot of us may have to telecommute on our jobs.  And we're going to be more socially isolated than we've ever been, even in this social-media-fueled auto-suburb living pattern that already isolates us enough. Me, I am going to the best thing I can do to avoid getting coronavirus . . . wash my hands regularly. :-O  

Go East, Young Athlete

With the 2016 Rio Olympics coming to a close soon, attention shifts east . . . far east.

The next three Olympiads, winter and summer, take place in eastern Asia, and in all three countries Americans once commonly referred to as the Orient - Korea, Japan and China, in that chronological order.   The 2018 Winter Olympics take place in Pyeongchang, South Korea, which is too small to be seen on this map but is about 110 miles east of Seoul.  It's already a ski resort town, so that makes sense.  The 2020 Olympics are to be held in Tokyo, which last hosted the Olympics in 1964.  I guess Tokyo is overdue for a repeat, but there's still the problem of the Fukushima nuclear power plant site being just up the coast. But given that the alternatives were Madrid and Istanbul - Spain has been mired in a big recession, and there was the proximity of Istanbul to Syria at a time when it was becoming apparent that the Syrian civil war wasn't going to end any time soon - it still made sense.

But Beijing hosting the 2022 Winter Olympics so soon after it hosted the 2008 Summer Games?  

You know, the Chinese have a lot of damn gall wanting to host another Olympiad in the same city only fourteen years after hosting the first one.  They couldn't wait awhile and give someone else a chance?  I know, I know, Innsbruck, Austria hosted the Winter Games twice within twelve years - 1964 and 1976 - but it hosted the 1976 Winter Games in an emergency after the residents of the original city of choice - Denver - said no to the bonds necessary to make the Winter Olympics happen.  And, of course, the Americans hosted the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta a mere twelve years after Los Angeles hosted the 1984 Summer Games. That shouldn't have happened either, something then-IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch acknowledged with great subtlety once the Atlanta Games ended, refusing to call them the greatest Games ever at the closing ceremony, as had been his custom at previous Summer Games closing ceremonies.  (Atlanta is Los Angeles with more cars and fewer health nuts.)  So why go back to Beijing so soon?

Oh yeah, another thing.  Winter Olympic cities tend to be smaller places, since the Winter Games have fewer countries and fewer athletes. Winter Olympiads tend to be, in comparison to the regular ones, cozy and intimate, like a comfortable ski lodge. Beijing, home to 21.7 million people, is not a cozy or intimate city. Unlike Pyeongchang, it's not hard to find on a map.

As it turns out, the logistics and the cost of staging even the Winter Games have gotten so out of hand that, when it was time to decide on a site for the 2022 Winter Olympics, there was only one other bid - from Almaty, Kazakhstan, a city whose biggest claim to fame is being the place Stalin banished Trotsky to before Trotsky made his way to Mexico.  So why not Almaty?  It would have been the first city in a former Soviet republic other than Russia to host an Olympiad, winter or summer, and it would have continued the streak of Olympiads in Asia - central Asia, yes, but still Asia.  Why not Almaty (population, 1.7 million people, twenty million fewer than Beijing), indeed?

Was it because of Borat? 

Aside from Beijing, though, I have no problem with the next Olympiads being held in three consecutive Asian cities.  After all, back in the 1920s, five consecutive winter and summer Olympiads were held in European cities, and no one had a problem with that.

Except maybe the Chinese and the Japanese . . .

No 2020 Vision

I can't believe I missed this story when it broke over the past weekend. It wasn't in my local Sunday paper, nor was it mentioned on the television news broadcast I always watch. If Bob Costas reported it, I must have missed it. But here's the latest in the continuing story of the United States Olympic Committee against the International Olympic Committee. . . . No American city will bid for the 2020 Olympics.

The USOC explained that, what with Chicago having spent $80 million for an unsuccessful bid for the 2016 Games that IOC animosity toward its American counterpart doomed from the start, it would be fruitless for any American city to bid for 2020. USOC Chairman Larry Probst said the IOC made it clear; as long as the USOC is unable to get its act together (leadership keeps changing at the top) or compromise with the IOC on revenue sharing, the United States is not going to get the Olympics again.

The USOC doesn't even want to discuss 2024.

It might be tempting to write off the USOC's move as sour grapes - taking all of its marbles out of the game and walking away. But Probst - who may be replaced as USOC chairman by the time you read this - is trying to make amends. He has been in Vancouver during the Winter Olympics and has spent more time talking with Olympic officials from other nations and 32 IOC members. He's been asking how the USOC can do better and respond to IOC concerns. It's going to be an ongoing process, as the disputes between the American and international committees will take more than a couple of cocktail parties in Vancouver to resolve.

In the meantime, American winter athletes have been taking more responsibility for their own appearances at and preparations before the Games, with the USOC growing more dysfunctional by the day and corporate sponsorship drying up due to the recession. (Stephen Colbert is only one man, supporting one sport. He can't do it alone.) It's why Americans have been winning more medals in Vancouver than anyone else - they've taught themselves the maturity and responsibility the USOC can't teach them. The children have become the parent, and vice versa. Probst has spent more time negotiating with Olympic officials in Vancouver than attending the actual events. Maybe he feels he shouldn't take the credit for the success of his country's athletes.

I'm glad we Americans won't get the Olympics for awhile. Let the USOC fix itself first, if that's even possible. Besides, if American cities had been able to bid for 2020, one of them would have likely been Tulsa.

Tulsa?

(My sympathies to Lindsey Vonn and Julia Mancuso for their giant slalom mishaps, especially to Vonn for her injury.)