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A senior member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said on Tuesday that if it proves too dangerous to hold the Olympics in Tokyo this summer because of the Coronavirus outbreak, organisers are more likely to cancel it altogether than to postpone or move it.
"In and around that time, I'd say folks are going to have to ask: ‘Is this under sufficient control that we can be confident about going to Tokyo or not?'” he said in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press.
As the games draw near, he said, “a lot of things have to start happening. You've got to start ramping up your security, your food, the Olympic Village, the hotels. The media folks will be in there building their studios."
If the IOC decides the games cannot go forward as scheduled in Tokyo, “you're probably looking at a cancellation," he said.
The viral outbreak that began in China two months ago has infected more than 80,000 people globally and killed over 2,700, the vast majority of them in China. But the virus has gained a foothold in South Korea, the Middle East and Europe, raising fears of a pandemic. Japan itself has reported four deaths.
Pound encouraged athletes to keep training. About 11,000 are expected for the Olympics, which open 24 July, and 4,400 are bound for the Paralympics, which open 25 August.
The modern Olympics, which date to 1896, have been canceled only during wartime. The Olympics in 1940 were supposed to be in Tokyo but were called off because of Japan's war with China and World War II. The Rio Games in Brazil went on as scheduled in 2016 despite the outbreak of the Zika virus.
Pound repeated the IOC's stance — that it is relying on consultations with the World Health Organisation, a United Nations body, to make any move.
As for the possibility of postponement, he said: "You just don't postpone something on the size and scale of the Olympics. There's so many moving parts, so many countries and different seasons, and competitive seasons, and television seasons. You can't just say, `We'll do it in October.'”
London mayoral candidate Shaun Bailey has suggested the British capital as an alternative. Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike suggested the offer was an attempt to use the virus for political purposes.
Pound said he would not favor a scattering of Olympic events to other places around the world because that wouldn't “constitute an Olympic Games. You'd end up with a series of world championships.” He also said it would be extremely difficult to spread around the various sports over a 17-day period with only a few months' notice.
Other world broadcasters also have jammed schedules.
“It would be tough to get the kind of blanket coverage that people expect around the Olympic Games,” Pound said.
He also cast doubt on the possibility of a one-year delay. Japan is officially spending $12.6 billion to organise the Olympics, although a national audit board says the country is spending twice that much.
Pound said the IOC has been building up an emergency fund, reported to be about $1 billion, for unforeseen circumstances to help the IOC and the international sports federations that depend on income from the IOC. About 73% of the IOC's $5.7 billion income in a four-year Olympic cycle comes from broadcast rights.
“It's not an insurable risk, and it's not one that can be attributed to one or the other of the parties," he said. “So everybody takes their lumps. There would be a lack of revenue on the Olympic movement side."
“If it gets to be something like the Spanish flu,” Pound said, referring to the deadly pandemic early in the 20th century that killed millions, “at that level of lethality, then everybody's got to take their medicine.”
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