The Olympics. Sports in general. Even a simple thing as coaches instructing their athletes face to face. All that, and perhaps society moving on as a whole, depends on the development of a vaccine against the coronavirus that is the cause of the COVID-19 pandemic.
As the International Olympic Committee (IOC) continues to search for a feasible, health-priority blueprint that will allow the postponed Tokyo Games to push through on its new schedule in July 2021, several sports bodies all over the world are trying to put protocols in place that will allow sports to continue despite restrictions on daily living.
The Philippine Sports Commission (PSC), for one, is moving toward establishing a new coaching structure that can be used regardless of the status of community quarantines imposed on the country to curb the disease.“Since face-to-face coaching is not possible, we will propose … to set up a new framework for coaching methods in a long-distance condition,’’ PSC Chair William Ramirez said.
The framework will be constructed in coordination with the Philippine Olympic Committee (POC) and its national sports associations.
Mobility problems
The POC is also moving to help athletes with their training—while addressing a mobility problem brought about by the freezing of public transportation in major parts of the country.
Abraham “Bambol” Tolentino, the POC president, on Wednesday announced that national athletes from sports under the Olympic program can receive free bicycles they can use for training.
“With the new normal, we have to find new ways to go about our daily businesses. Athletes who do not have a personal mode of transportation will surely benefit from this,” Tolentino said. “Bicycling is not only a healthy way to get from one point to another, it also promotes social distancing.”
Athletes have recently said that with movement limited due to quarantine measures, training has been difficult to undertake, with some resorting to creative measures to work out while being locked up in their homes.
While a relaxed lockdown may allow athletes out of the house, it won’t solve the problem of training under their coaches face-to-face or moving from their homes to potential training venues. Bicycles will help with the latter while Ramirez’s online training network will solve the other. The PSC is already laying an information technology infrastructure for online and virtual meetings where coaches and athletes can resume their personalized training sessions.
No answers
With no vaccine still developed against the virus, even the IOC has difficulty answering questions about the Olympics.
“Nobody can, at this moment in time, really give you a reliable answer on how the world will look like in July 2021,” IOC president Thomas Bach acknowledged.
“It is too early to start speculation on different scenarios and what it may need at the time to guarantee this safe environment for all participants.”
For now, Ramirez feels that safe environment is online.
“The framework of coaching education, until no vaccine is found, will all be virtual or online, reaching out to all elite athletes in their locations,’’ Ramirez said.
The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Saturday it will not be easy to make next year’s Tokyo Olympics a safe global gathering after the pandemic.
Speaking at a joint news conference with the IOC, WHO’s director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called for “national unity and global solidarity” to fight the coronavirus pandemic ahead of the Olympics. The Games, postponed this year, should bring athletes from more than 200 countries to Japan.
“We hope Tokyo will be a place where humanity will gather with triumph against COVID,” Tedros earlier said. “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.”
Around 11,000 athletes from more than 200 teams are due to compete at the Tokyo Olympics. Most would be joined by team officials staying in an athletes village complex of 5,600 apartments at Tokyo Bay.
Health experts, including in Japan, have questioned how the 33-sport Olympics can be run before an effective global vaccine program is in place. —with a report from AP