The Cost of Olympic Postponement
by Savannah Cress
At this point, most of us are aware that the 2020 Olympic Games have been postponed. To many, the news is disappointing; we’ve waited four years since the last summer Olympics, we get this close, and now have to wait a whole additional year. For the average track fan, the concept of waiting, though disappointing, is a relatively simple and straightforward one. For those on the opposite side of the screen, what actually has to happen behind the scenes during that one year we are patiently waiting is anything but simple and straightforward.
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Like a lot of other events occurring in our world at the moment, the Olympic postponement caught many off-guard. “It’s really hard to believe. I’m in shock,’’ stated 2008 Olympic champion Dawn Harper-Nelson when the news broke. “With everything going on and all the events around the world being canceled, we kept hearing and about the possibility of the Olympics being postponed. But these are the Olympics and it’s been around for so long. We didn’t think it would happen.” [1]
Harper-Nelson had fairly good reason for thinking postponement would never actually happen. Since the first modern Olympics, in 1896, the Games have never been postponed. Due to war, they have been canceled three times, but never postponed.
The 1916 Summer Games, scheduled to take place in Berlin, were canceled with the outbreak of World War I. The next Olympics to face cancellation was the 1940 Games. The winter events were slated, a bit ironically, to take place in Tokyo, and the Summer Games in Sapporo, Japan. (Fun fact for Gen Z: prior to 1994, the summer and winter games were held in the same year.) After war broke out with China in 1937, Japan opted out of hosting the Olympics in both locations. The Games were subsequently canceled all together in 1939, after the Nazi’s invaded Poland. If you paid attention in World History class at all, you know that WWII continued on into 1945, thus prompting the cancelation of the 1944 Olympics as well. [2] [3] [8]
So in 124 years of Olympics, 1916, 1940 and 1944 are the only years in which the Games did not happen as scheduled, and they did not happen at all. So whose idea was it to attempt to move the dates in 2020? I’m glad for the postponement rather than an all-out cancellation, but really, how does this work logistically? I mean, what exactly is involved in rescheduling the largest sporting event in the world? I once had to postpone a 6-year-old’s birthday party. It involved approximately 8 locally-based kids, a park location, and an impending storm. It was no easy feat. I cannot fathom where one would even begin to reschedule a 16-day, multibillion-dollar event involving thousands of athletes, hundreds of thousands of fans, as well as sponsors, all from different countries. The Olympic Games Operations Director, Pierre Ducrey, describes the undertaking as “a very complex jigsaw puzzle of negotiations with private and public parties and a number of stakeholders in the Olympic Movement.” If we are going with the “jigsaw puzzle” metaphor, it seems to me it’s closer to a situation of having 4 different, but similarly-hued, puzzles of 3,000+ pieces all mixed up together in one giant, pictureless box. [7] [8] [9]
First we have the athletes themselves. There are roughly 11,000 of them, from all over the globe, who plan to compete in the Tokyo games. When an athlete has the Olympics realistically in his or her foresight, that athlete’s training program is likely laid out years in advance. The athlete and coach have carefully mapped out a plan to bring the athlete to his or her peak right around time for the Olympics. Finding out that there are actually 15 months of training before a huge event you previously thought was just 3 months out throws a bit of a wrench in a carefully thought-through plan, especially with many training facilities being closed down at the moment. But it’s not even strictly the physical training aspect that is complicated for the participants. Many Olympic-bound athletes work their entire lives around a 4-year cycle. Careers, higher-education, starting families — these are all considerations that some athletes at this level put on hold in order to pursue their Olympic goals. These important life events that have been on the back burner for 4 years and are so close to being able to move up the priority chain, all of the sudden must be paused for an additional 25% of the initial commitment. All athletes have to figure out if they are at peace with waiting another year to move on to the next phase and, perhaps even more pressing of a decision, if they can financially sustain another year of serious training. The reality is, the athletes with substantial corporate sponsorship are in the minority. A huge percentage of Olympians must creatively find jobs flexible enough to work around their training schedules and finance their own way to the Games.
To finish off the athlete part of the puzzle, the dynamic of the field can shift significantly in a year. The older generation of seasoned athletes has to decide if their bodies are up for 15 more months of intensive training. The up-and-coming generation, the ones who are strong but green, now have an additional year to gain experience, to grow stronger, to find their rhythms competing at the professional level. Competitors who have been on the outskirts of the radar have a newly-open window of time to work their way toward Olympic qualification. That’s not really a negative or a positive; it just is. [10] [9] [8] [17]
Another inescapable piece of the puzzle is economic. Preparations for the Olympics have been going on in Japan since 2013, when Tokyo was selected to host the 2020 Games. The original plan for preparations had a budget of around $7 billion. Over the past years, that budget has at least doubled. Now even more costs will compound in order to keep things on hold for the next year. Hospitality businesses in the area, restaurants, hotels, have all been preparing for the huge influx of tourists that will come with the event. Already struggling with the economic pause induced by the coronavirus, many of these establishments are seriously hurting knowing the redeeming anticipated income over the summer will be nonexistent.
Another substantial revenue shortage due to the postponement comes in the broadcasting department. NBC was set to air the Olympic coverage. With that coverage now unnecessary, NBC has lost around $1.2 billion in advertisement revenue. Companies that had purchased ad time to be aired during the Olympics should be able to recoup their costs through contractual law, as the event is no longer taking place as described in the agreements, but that in turn leaves NBC with substantial air time this summer void of advertisements. While from where I’m sitting, that sounds ideal, it will turn 2020 to a complete loss from the studio’s side. [11] [12]
In addition to the revamping of training programs, the extra cost of maintaining various Olympic facilities through the next year, the reworking of other athletic events with Olympic-conflicting schedules, and the impending renegotiations of countless involved contracts, safety concerns must also now be addressed. With medical experts estimating it will take at least a year to come out with an approved vaccine for COVID-19, it is likely some level of additional health-related safety measures will still need to be taken at an event that size, even with it occurring next summer. [13] [14]
With hosting the Olympics comes an unparalleled opportunity to expose millions of viewers to a city, country and culture that they otherwise may not encounter. The Olympics brings hoards of people to whatever location it happens to occupy in any given year. The Games have reliably been held, despite tragic world events, such as the 1972 terrorist attack in Munich, which claimed 11 Israeli Olympic teammates, and the events of 9/11/2002, which brought down the World Trade Center in New York. The Games have carried on, serving as an act of unification, a reminder of humanity and sportsmanship. Athletes and spectators all around the world are brought together, in person and through screens, to share in passionate competition.
Tokyo wholly embraced this opportunity and promoted the 2020 Games as “the most innovative in history,” building upon three core themes: “achieving personal best,” “unity in diversity,” and “connecting to tomorrow.” Tokyo plans to show Olympic viewers new perspectives of contemporary Japan and Japanese heritage, projecting itself as a trendsetting international cultural and creative center of the world. While the additional cost of postponing the Olympics may cut into the funding allocated to Tokyo’s culture and arts agenda, the unanticipated situation also provides the organizers of this agenda a unique outlet to smoothly showcase the country’s caring response to the current global health crisis. It is an opportunity to use the Japanese community’s wealth of rich heritage and creativity to spread inspiration in an uneasy time. Beatriz Garcia, the director of the Cities of Culture Research Observatory at the University of Liverpool, put an optimistic spin on the delay when she wrote: “The postponement of the games therefore offers an opportunity to refocus the public’s attention on the symbolic dimension of the Olympics. After all, the games are supposed to be a festival, designed to showcase human excellence and bring the world together in peaceful community rituals. The absence of the games in 2020 offers an additional year for organisers and artists to explore these aspirations and express them in innovative ways.” [15] [16]
This historical rescheduling of the world’s most well-known sporting event hits close to home for some who remember previous Olympic cancelations. Former Olympian Herb Douglas was in the shoes of many Olympic hopefuls today. When WWII was ramping up, Douglas had just graduated from Taylor Allderdice High School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His dream was to compete in the 1944 Olympics, and he was training hard toward that goal. With the 1944 Invasion of Normandy underway in June, the Games were called off. The world was at war and, not unlike the current Coronavirus situation, there was no clear end in sight. Undeterred, Douglas trained harder, despite not knowing when his next opportunity to compete for his country would arise.
Douglas did get that 2nd opportunity, as 1948 was his year. With the war over, Douglas graduated from the University of Pittsburgh, placed second in the Olympic trials and went on to win a bronze medal in the long jump at the 1948 Olympics in London.
Today, Douglas is 98 years old. He is the oldest-living African American Olympic medalist. The Olympics being postponed understandably took him right back to 1944. To the athletes affected by schedule changes brought on by the Coronavirus today, Douglas matter-of-factly stated, “You have to adjust yourself to the conditions if you wanted to make the Olympic team, stand on the podium and win an Olympic medal. You adjust yourself to train harder.” His advice resonates with many who are not athletes as well. The only thing any of us can control right now, really always, is ourselves, our reactions. We can allow the uncertainty of the situation to take our minds down the rabbit hole of “what if’s” and “whys,” we can stick our heads in the sand and ignore the situation entirely, or we can adjust ourselves to the conditions and train harder. [4] [5] [6]
Sources
[1] https://www.bnd.com/sports/article241437726.html
[2]https://www.latimes.com/sports/olympics/story/2020-03-24/olympics-history-tokyo-games-postponed
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herb_Douglas
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Normandy
[8]https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/sports/olympics/coronavirus-summer-olympics-postponed.html
[9] https://www.olympic.org/news/what-goes-into-postponing-the-olympic-games
[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Summer_Olympics
[11] https://www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2020/03/27/japan-summer-games-alastair-gale
[13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_World_Athletics_Championships
[15] https://tokyo2020.org/en/games/games-vision/
[16]https://theconversation.com/olympics-postponement-may-be-a-cultural-opportunity-for-tokyo-134871
[17]http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2012/08/08/How-Corporations-Sponsor-Olympic-Athletes
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