The Olympics are postponed, races are cancelled, running right now is weird
We're all doing our best here. Stay safe, everyone.
Hello.
I hope you’re all hanging in there.
The Olympics are postponed. Races keep getting cancelled. Running at this time is weird, but also essential for a lot of people. This issue covers all that, and a bit more.
We got this. One day at a time.
If you want to reach out, you can email me at runthenorthnews@gmail.com.
— Erin @ Run the North
The Olympics ARE getting delayed
Last week’s issue was dedicated to the case for postponing the Olympics. And by the end of the day last Monday, it was official: Tokyo 2020 will be held in 2021.
Below, I break down what we do and do not know, officially, as of Sunday night.
Here is what we DO know
☑️Athletes who have qualified will keep their qualification spots
57 percent of total athletes who will compete in the Games have already qualified. In Canadian, running, two marathoners are in this group: Canadian champs Trevor Hofbauer and Dayna Pidhoresky. A few more women have earned the qualifying standard, but not have been chosen for the team.
Trevor and Dayna, along with athletes in other sports, like wrestler Erica Wiebe, will maintain their team berth, the IOC announced on Friday. The number of athletes set for the Games will also not change. So while the timing has changed, athlete statuses have not.
☑️The branding will remain Tokyo 2020
There’s a lot of investment in branding, logos, medals and more for the Olympics. So when it postponement was announced, it was a fair question: what happens to the branding?
It was announced by the governor of Tokyo, Yuriko Koike, that it will still be Tokyo 2020. It will just take place in 2021.
Sponsors in Japan have been using the Tokyo 2020 logo since 2015. Official stores in Japan, meanwhile, have been selling merchandise since 2018, ranging from $5 pin badges to $2,000 ornamental Samurai helmets and $15,000 solid gold bars. Most items are stamped with the “Tokyo 2020” logo. Advertising for the Games with the logo is widespread around Japan, including on trains, billboards, soda cans and television commercials.
This makes sense to me: it IS the 2020 Games, with the 2020 athletes, in the 2020 city, just a year later. It’s not a different event.
☑️Athletes are mostly supportive of this move, but it won’t work for everyone
After the announcement, several athletes — both qualified and aspiring — voiced support of the decision, including Andre De Grasse, Dayna Pidhoresky, Reid Coolsaet, Krista DuChene, Aaron Brown and Melissa Bishop-Nriagu.
Uncertainty sucks. And waiting another year, while inconvenient, at least gives purpose and direction in training.
However, a year-long delay won’t work for every athlete. Athletes have retirement, starting families, financial situations and more to think about when deciding whether it’s worth putting their Olympic dreams off for another year.
Most people will agree that this is the decision, [CBC analyst Scott] Russell noted, but it might also spell the end of Olympic careers for several Canadians, including middle-distance runner Melissa Bishop-Nriagu, 31, swimmer Brent Hayden, 36, and 39-year-old Brent Lakatos, a 12-time world Paralympic champion who won gold at the World Para Athletics Championships in November.
“They have to go through another year and hold on to get ready for a postponed Olympics, so there's going to be some hardship and sacrifice," said Russell. "Brent Lakatos told me yesterday that he'd been working 16 years to get ready for the Paralympics in Tokyo in 2020 (but he said a year postponement) is a lot to process.”
No one has officially announced they won’t be pursuing an Olympic spot as a result of this change just yet, but there’s still time.
Here is what we DON’T know
❓When in 2021 the Olympics will be held
This is the official word from the IOC: the 2020 Olympic Games will be held “a date beyond 2020 but not later than summer 2021.”
That leaves us with a seven- to eight-month window. When they happen will depend on several things: venue availability, when other international sport meets happen (whether they are originally scheduled or re-scheduled), when we can see the other side of this pandemic and start planning things.
CBC Sports argues that it will probably be in the same time window as the original 2020 plan — late July through early August — because it’s the best spot in the international sport schedule.
The decision to pick an almost identical date to this year’s event is not particularly surprising, given the challenges to squeeze the Olympics in an already packed sporting calendar. It also is the best time for the U.S. broadcaster, NBCUniversal, which pays more than $1 billion for the U.S. media rights to each Olympic Games.
The same article says that World Athletics’ Sebastian Coe is into this plan and is willing to move the track & field championships to 2022 to make it happen.
In fact, such a move could be good for the sport:
“You may have world championships in consecutive years where we wouldn’t normally have had that,’’ he said. “But for athletics, it’s not such a bad thing. To go from 2021 Olympic Games into two editions of the world championships, ’22 — possibly ’22 — ’23 we’re in Budapest, and then into the Olympic Games in Paris in ’24.
“It would offer athletics center stage at a very public point of the year,’’ he added. “So let’s look at it from a slightly optimistic way of being able to punch our sport into the homes of many more people over a four-year consecutive cycle.”
❓If the qualification process for the 43 percent of athletes who haven’t qualified will change
Qualification tournaments are getting cancelled left and right. We’ll only better understand the steps an athlete can take to the Games once they are rescheduled, qualifying windows are re-set and qualifying tournaments are re-scheduled. Before the Games were officially postponed, the IOC suggested some sort of less conventional path to the Olympics — which weight historical performances and rankings — as qualifying tournaments got canned. That may still be on the table, if the turnaround time between the pandemic ending and the Games beginning is really tight.
❓ Who is paying for the postponement?
So much of the coverage around postponement — rightfully — focused on the athletes ability to prepare and execute. But the Olympics are a billion-dollar business and postponement will come at a cost. So who will foot the bill?
It’s unclear, but it’s probably going to fall primarily to the citizens who have funded much of the 2020 bid so far: Japanese taxpayers.
The Japanese financial newspaper Nikkei put the added cost at $2.7 billion US, citing an estimate from local organizers.
Tokyo organizers will have to renegotiate new leases on venues, pay for maintenance at arenas, and maybe find different fields of play. They will also have to deal with real estate developers who are already selling off thousands of apartments at what will be the athletes' village. The organizing committee also employs 3,500 staff members, and some may lose their jobs to cost cutting.
❓What else about the Olympics is going to change
It probably won’t be possible to lift the 2020 template, schedule, infrastructure, etc. and drop it into the 2021 calendar exactly as planned. This is why they originally announced a four-week window to prep for a possible postponement. We will learn in time what this means for the Olympic model as we know it. But any article that tries to get into this is only speculation at this point. This kind of work is going to take a while.
The Associated Press has a great Q&A that outlines all the unanswered questions, like what will happen to tickets already sold, what will happen to the athletes’ village and more.
What goes into cancelling a race? Race directors speak out
I’m done rounding up race cancellations because everything is moving so quickly.
But know this: races as far into June are getting cancelled. We aren’t racing for a long time.
Cancelling races sucks. Races often operate on razor-thin margins. There are plenty of stakeholders involved, including levels of government, medical and security partners and sponsors, who have a say in the race’s next steps.
Kirsten Flemming, the race director for the Calgary marathon, wrote an open letter to runners on iRun about how hard it is to cancel or reschedule a race:
Rescheduling an event, especially large road races, to a later date is complex and requires many stakeholders to sign off. We (I mean every race director from Blue Nose Marathon to Boston) are all working tirelessly with our many stakeholders (sponsors, municipalities and private venues where we hold our races such as stadiums and community centres) to find alternative dates. In some cases, it’s just not possible. Circumstances might include: no available weekends or emergency services can’t commit the resources or there are other events on the calendar that would be compromised. For international events (such as BMO Vancouver Marathon) rescheduling for a later date (when we don’t even know what the future holds and when “things will get back to normal”) doesn’t service participants who have hotel and flights booked EVEN if venues were available and the city on board with a new date.
Kirsten was also one of three race directors to go on The Shakeout podcast, alongside Alan Brookes of Canada Running Series (which postponed two events and cancelled two more) and Nancy Holland of Run Nova Scotia (which rescheduled their flagship weekend to the fall), to discuss what goes into race directing and what it’s like to be a race director in these uncertain times.
Runner’s World tackled the topic too, talking to directors of four American races —Big Sur, Eugene, Flying Pig and Napa Valley — about what they wish runners knew about organizing and cancelling events.
Running in a time of coronavirus
It’s a weird time to be a runner. Races are cancelled. Run crews are on hiatus. People are doing what they can to stay close to the sport they love, and that might be the one thing keeping them sane.
People are running marathons on balconies, in backyards and around blocks. One runner is running 100 miles to support health care workers.
I will say this: do what you need to do to stay sane during this period. This should be true always, but it’s especially true now: It’s OK to not be running right now. It’s OK to be running more than you’ve ever run before. Just do your best, and what works for you. Don’t do things you don’t want to do. And don’t let the feats of others make you feel less about yourself.
And if you are running: be grateful for it. It could be taken away any day. Montreal is considering limiting runners to 1K from their home, according to le Journal de Montreal.
👟 Before Christmas, I recommended 26 books about running. If you’re looking for some entertainment to pass the time, you might find something there.
Some of my symptoms today are: My body aches came back. I constantly have a headache. My throat burns. My breathing sounds different, and can sometimes be labored. My body temperature fell below 35 C the other day, the temperature for hypothermia. My toenails started to turn blue. My lips turned purple. I have three pairs of wool socks on my feet right now and they are still cold. I took my temperature, I’m just above 35 C today. My hands are shaky, my dexterity is strained. I lost 10 pounds in the past week. I’m not trying to lose weight. I have no appetite. I can’t smell, I can’t taste.
👟Eliud Kipchoge is sharing what his training looks like during this time of self-isolation with BBC. It’s a video series and I can’t embed it, so click on the link to watch it.
I am seeing this break as one similar to a pregnancy or serious injury. With three babies and one broken leg I’ve sat out of 4 different seasons over the years. I learned that I could recharge mentally while maintaining a good amount of fitness. Each time I returned with an incredible passion and was faster than ever before. I ran a 2:32 (Rotterdam 2012, F9), a 7 minute personal best, in my first marathon back after our third child who had just turned 13 months. And I ran my second fastest marathon, a 2:29 (Rotterdam 2015, F2) that got me my Olympic standard, 11.5 months after fracturing my femur.
Our bodies will remember what to do when we train and race again.
👟 Greek Olympian Alexi Pappas wrote about the unifying power of running for Sports Illustrated:
As quarantines and shelter-in-place become our new normal, it’s no wonder that more and more people are turning to running as their exercise of choice: Not only is it compatible with social distancing, it also feels like a “reset” button for the mind. Running is about a relationship with the world around us, but also about a relationship with ourselves.
Those little magical moments of familiarity that I feel on my trail runs are important to me. As coach says, “We are in a very strange situation, in a very beautiful place.” Through running, I am not just consuming this feeling of home with my eyes, but also with my whole body, with all of my senses. Running through those near-mythical woods in Greece feels like I am taking a mental bath.
👟 Journalist Wendy Gillis wrote about finding comfort in running during this time in the Toronto Star:
Give or take the specifics, this was the picture of my first work week in this jolting new reality. I am among the mass migration from office to home — fortunate to still be employed, doubly lucky to work safely in my own space — and my days look nothing like they did just a week ago. Tectonic shifts in our world happened daily, or hourly. As the borders closed, as community spread of this deadly virus was confirmed, as provinces declared states of emergencies, I eventually closed my laptop each day and tried to run away from it all.
I have never been more grateful for running.
👟 Finally, Geneviève Lalonde is making the most of her self isolation. Click on the posts to swipe through all the new sports she’s trying, er, inventing, to pass the time:
Canadian archaeologist Rachel Dewan was on the Ali on the Run Show
The Ali on the Run Show launched a series about runners with cool jobs. First up is Canadian archaeologist Rachel Dewan.
Rachel is pursuing her PhD in archaeology at the University of Toronto and is a badass runner. She runs with Portland Runners in Toronto and recently ran the Boston marathon.
I actually nominated Rachel in the Ali on the Run Facebook group when Ali asked for runners we knew with cool jobs. Being an archaeologist is cool, so Rachel totally qualified. I had no idea that Ali took my suggestion until the episode came out.
You can listen to the episode here.
New episodes in the series are coming for the next six Tuesdays, I can’t wait to see what other cool jobs are featured.
Dave Scott-Thomas receives lifetime ban
Dave Scott-Thomas, the former University of Guelph and Speed River coach who was fired after Megan Brown revealed he sexually abused her when she was a teenager, received a lifetime ban from the sport by Athletics Canada this week:
Scott-Thomas is banned from coaching or training any Athletics Canada athlete or member of an affiliated club or association. He's also banned from attending any event such as a track meet as a spectator unless his children are registered to compete, and will have no access to the track, training and warm-up areas.
After five years, Scott-Thomas can attend competitions and other events that are open to the general public, but must not engage in coaching or have access to the track, training or warm-up areas.
Megan Brown spoke to iRun about this decision:
Did Dave’s punishment equal what he deserved?
I don’t like the word “punishment,” I haven’t been working from that place. For me, I work more from karmic resolution. I think there’s order to everything and as I move through this process I can see there’s a lot that needed to be resolved. I didn’t realize how much it was impacting me the fact that it wasn’t resolved.
What do you mean?
Moving through the stages: the story went out, and there was a lot of healing from that, and closure. Then the institutional stuff, and that impacted me less than maybe you’d think, but this piece is bigger than I thought it would be. It feels like the final necessary piece for karmic closure — for me at least.
That’s it for this week.
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As long as we can keep running, I’ll keep putting this newsletter together.
Thanks for reading, and take care of yourself. I’ll see you next week.