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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Nathan Chen, skating coaches react to cancellation of world figure skating championships

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Nathan Chen, skating coaches react to cancellation of world figure skating championships


For two-time defending champion Nathan Chen, the cancellation of the World Figure Skating Championships in Montreal because of the coronavirus pandemic brought disappointment and relief.

“Given how quickly this virus has spread across the world, it’s definitely the right move for the populace as a whole,” Chen said in a Wednesday teleconference after a Quebec government minister had announced the cancellation.

“Even before this decision was made, I was concerned about people around me. I was worried about Raf [his coach, Rafael Arutunian] because he has been traveling a lot. Ultimately, I’m glad they are able to stay at home, to stay where they are, to sort of prevent the spread of this virus.”

His U.S. teammate Mariah Bell, like Chen coached by Arutunian and prepared to compete in a fourth straight worlds, echoed his feelings.

“I certainly understand there are bigger things than sport,” Bell said during the teleconference.

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Vincent Zhou on turning his life inside out, nomadic existence and surprisingly strong figure skating at nationals

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Vincent Zhou on turning his life inside out, nomadic existence and surprisingly strong figure skating at nationals


Vincent Zhou’s plans for this season went completely out the window.

After leaving his previous training base in Colorado Springs last August to begin studies at Brown University in Providence, R.I., where he hoped to finish freshman year before taking a leave, the reigning world bronze medalist found himself without a place nearby to train.

The Brown rink had little available time, its ice conditions were fine for hockey but not figure skating, and the hockey coaches made it clear they didn’t like the way he dug it up with the toe pick.

After briefly enduring a brutal commute to a rink north of Boston, he put skating on hold in early October.

By December, Zhou decided it would be better to put school on hold after finishing one semester, and he moved to Toronto to train with coach Lee Barkell and choreographer Lori Nichol.

With barely two weeks of steady training before nationals, Zhou managed to place fourth, wisely choosing to limit his quadruple jumps to one in each program. It was good enough to earn one of the three 2020 U.S. world team spots based on his two-year body of work after finishing sixth at the 2018 Olympics.

With the World Championships coming up in Montreal, NBCSports.com/figure-skating spoke recently by phone with Zhou about his nomadic existence since the move, his performance at nationals, his expectations for worlds and his plans after that.

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Nathan Chen on rivalry with Hanyu, his coach's first visit to Yale and his future plans

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Nathan Chen on rivalry with Hanyu, his coach's first visit to Yale and his future plans

When Nathan Chen enrolled at Yale in the fall of 2018, his California-based coach, Rafael Arutunian, was concerned about Chen being able to keep up his level of skating with essentially a phone and FaceTime coaching arrangement.

Since then, the Yale sophomore has won all nine of his competitions, including a world title, two Grand Prix Final titles and a third and fourth straight U.S. title. His performances to beat two-time Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan at last season’s World Championships and at this season’s Grand Prix Final were both simply brilliant and also the best of Chen’s career.

With the 2020 World Championships beginning March 18, NBCSports.com/figure-skating recently spoke via telephone with Chen, 20, about Arutunian’s acceptance of the coast-to-coast separation, the rivalry with Hanyu, and Chen’s plans for next season.

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