Time for IOC to drop Pollyanna act and tell everyone there may be no Olympics in 2020

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Time for IOC to drop Pollyanna act and tell everyone there may be no Olympics in 2020

There are some 11,000 athletes hoping to compete at the Summer Olympics scheduled to open July 24 in Tokyo.

At this point, all those athletes should be able to (choose a biblical or mythological metaphor):

*See the handwriting on the wall.

*Feel the sword of Damocles above their heads.

And yet the president of the International Olympic Committee and the Prime Minister of Japan refuse to acknowledge publicly the possibility the 2020 Summer Games won’t take place in 2020 – or ever.

In their hubristic refrain that the Games will go, these alleged leaders provide unjustifiable encouragement to athletes whose preparation and qualification processes already have been severely disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.

These athletes, who get an Olympic opportunity once every four years, deserve honesty, not self-interested, Panglossian avoidance of reality.

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Jason Brown on finding his self-worth, skating to "Schindler's List" and his transformed technique

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Jason Brown on finding his self-worth, skating to "Schindler's List" and his transformed technique

This interview with Jason Brown was done a week before the 2020 World Figure Skating Championships were cancelled because of the coronavirus pandemic. It was planned as an advance story for the event but had not been published before Wednesday’s cancellation announcement.

Because nearly all my questions addressed general rather than worlds-specific areas, I thought figure skating fans still would like to read it. I have edited some things to reflect the changed situation.

First, though, this statement Brown sent me by text soon after the cancellation was announced.

“I’m disappointed not to have the opportunity to compete at worlds. At the same time, I recognize this situation is way bigger than me or figure skating, and I’m 100% in support of doing everything we can to protect each other and our communities.”

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Evan Lysacek's golden performances seem surreal to him 10 years later

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Evan Lysacek's golden performances seem surreal to him 10 years later

Last month, when Evan Lysacek was speaking to students in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in his role as a sports envoy for the U.S. Department of State, the presentation included a showing of his figure skating short program and free skate from the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

Lysacek rarely skates these days. He last did something that could be called a public performance when Ice Theatre of New York honored him in October 2016. With an ankle ligament still sore from a misstep injury that threatened to have him in a cast for his wedding last Dec. 14, he shuffled briefly around the ice while working with skaters in Malaysia

That detachment from the sport has made it difficult for him to believe what he was seeing in the video of the greatest performances of his career.

“It’s surreal to watch,” Lysacek said. “When I think of what it took to get there, I think, ‘How did I ever do that?’”

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In figure skating, a radical proposal to reshape the sport

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In figure skating, a radical proposal to reshape the sport

In an attempt to rebalance the athletic and artistic sides of figure skating, the sport’s technical committee for singles and pairs is submitting a proposal with sweeping changes for consideration by the International Skating Union at its biennial congress this June in Thailand.

The proposal comes at a moment when the jump revolutions in men’s and women’s singles skating have created a huge competitive imbalance in favor of skaters doing the most difficult jumps – quadruples for men, quads and triple Axels for women.

The proposal will not be made public until April, when the 2020 congress agenda is published. But Fabio Bianchetti of Italy, chair of the ISU singles and pairs technical committee, confirmed its essence and intent to NBCSports.com in emails.

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Yuzuru Hanyu's new (old) programs sound like a broken record. Same old, same old doesn't befit his skating genius

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Yuzuru Hanyu's new (old) programs sound like a broken record. Same old, same old doesn't befit his skating genius

I am going to start my discussion about Yuzuru Hanyu’s decision to recycle old programs with an effort (undoubtedly futile) to stave off an uprising by the Hanyubots, the unhinged slice of Hanyu’s huge and generally terrific fan base that turns into a cult to troll anyone who ventures a legitimate criticism of the skater they worship.

I can only hope they will read at least the next four paragraphs before beginning a knee-jerk rant, as they usually do when, for instance, Hanyu gets scores they deem unfair.

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