Victims of hibernation

Former POC president and now Fencing Confederation of Asia president Cito Dayrit said yesterday elite athletes can’t afford not to train even during this pandemic, calling on government authorities to consider issuing special passes for hibernating sports standouts to commute to sanitized gyms while complying with health guidelines.

“I’ve contacted sports officials in different countries and I’m told their elite athletes continue to train,” said Dayrit. “In Hong Kong, national athletes are dorming and training at the Sports Institute. In the US, gyms are closed but some clubs are open for selected athletes to train in. It’s the same thing in some European countries. Chinese and Korean national athletes are permitted to train under special conditions with some going to cities that show less COVID-19 exposures. But the training is allowed only for elite athletes in individual, non-contact sports.”

Two months in hibernation may set back an athletes’ training and conditioning program to ground level. “National athletes are also frontliners,” he said. “They dedicate themselves to the country. Perhaps, they may be given special consideration by our government to commute to training halls with quarantine passes. Sports like fencing, archery, shooting, track and field and swimming don’t involve contact so athletes could maintain safe social distancing.”

Dayrit said while the Tokyo Olympics have been reset to next year, there is no certainty the Games will push through unless a vaccine is discovered and proved effective in neutralizing the coronavirus. “Right now, it’s too early to confirm that the Olympics will surely happen,” he said. “We’re all hopeful, of course. But it appears that if the Olympics won’t be held next year, there will be no more postponement, it will be a cancellation.”

Dayrit said IOC president Thomas Bach was himself a victim of missing the Olympics once. Bach was 23 when he won a gold medal in the team foil event at the 1976 Montreal Games and would’ve competed for Germany once more in the 1980 Olympics but missed the opportunity because of the Free World boycott with Moscow as host. The US and 65 other countries, including the Philippines, sat out the Games. In the 1984 Olympics, it was the Eastern Bloc’s turn to withdraw. The Soviet Union led a boycott of 14 countries. Dayrit said there is now an IOC rule that suspends or expels a country for boycotting the Olympics.

If the Olympics are cancelled next year, athletes all over the world may not get another chance to compete in Paris in 2024 or the odds for landing a podium finish will have reversed. Three-time Olympic weightlifter Hidilyn Diaz is now 29 and will be 33 when the Olympics take place in Paris. It’s not sure if Diaz will be as competitive four years from now as she is today. World gymnastics champion Caloy Yulo is at his peak at the moment but in 2024, he’ll be 24 and who knows what will happen in four years.

Dayrit said whether the Olympics happen or not is beyond anyone’s control. “Mr. Bach held back from announcing the postponement of this year’s Olympics because he waited for the Japanese organizing committee to decide what to do,” he said. “It wasn’t Mr. Bach’s indecision. The IOC can cancel the Olympics but a postponement is mainly up to the host country. In this pandemic, it’s under our government’s control to allow elite athletes in specific sports to train under strict conditions.” Dayrit said the POC and PSC could confer with the IATF on which athletes in certain sports may be issued passes. “E. J. Obiena and Caloy are in deep training abroad but the elite athletes in our country are hibernating,” he said. “National athletes are our sports frontliners who serve our country in their own battleground.”